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Ostend
Ostend: Stefan Zweig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark | Volker Weidermann
7 posts | 8 read | 5 to read
It's the summer of 1936, and the writer Stefan Zweig is in crisis. His German publisher no longer wants him, his marriage is collapsing, and his house in Austria--searched by the police two years earlier--no longer feels like home. He's been dreaming of Ostend, the Belgian beach town that is a paradise of promenades, parasols, and old friends. So he journeys there with his lover, Lotte Altmann, and reunites with fellow writer and semi-estranged close friend Joseph Roth, who is himself about to fall in love. For a moment, they create a fragile haven. But as Europe begins to crumble around them, the writers find themselves trapped on vacation, in exile, watching the world burn. In Ostend, Volker Weidermann lyrically recounts "the summer before the dark," when a coterie of artists, intellectuals, drunks, revolutionaries, and madmen found themselves in limbo while Europe teetered on the edge of fascism and total war. Ostend is the true story of two of the twentieth century's great writers, written with a novelist's eye for pacing, chronology, and language--a dazzling work of historical nonfiction. (Translated from the German by Carol Brown Janeway)
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charl08
Summer Before the Dark | Volker Weidermann
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Zweig on the power of reading.

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charl08
Summer Before the Dark | Volker Weidermann
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Was so pleased to get this from the library.

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Abailliekaras
Summer Before the Dark | Volker Weidermann
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Pickpick

Wonderful snapshot of an era and some of its cultural icons including Stefan Zweig & Joseph Roth. I loved the clean writing and unsentimental tone. He imagines some of their thoughts or speech but it never feels speculative - it‘s drawn from letters & diaries. By curating their stories to give us the interesting parts & where they intersect, he gives us a book that feels lively & fresh. I loved the insights into Zweig (a favourite author).

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MeikeReads
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Pickpick

In this book, some of the most famous German-language writers, among them Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, spend one last summer together in their Belgian exile before they get scattered all over the world and WWII destroys the continent (including Ostend). Many of those brilliant minds later killed themselves because they had lost faith in humanity. This is such a timely read, it makes my stomach turn. #belgium #ostend #travelitsy

AceOnRoam 😢😢😢 6y
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MeikeReads
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Walking towards Ostende while listening to Weidermann's "Ostende 1936"...#belgium #ostende #travelitsy #audiobook

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JewishBookCouncil
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"You should earn enough as a #writer to drink one to two bottles of #Champagne per day once you're within eight or nine weeks of finishing a #novel. It's a shitty time, and this would put you in the right mood to work, and you wouldn't get ill." #JewLit

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mabith
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"You should earn enough as a writer to be able to drink one to two bottles of *decent* dry champagne per day once your within eight or nine weeks of finishing a novel. It's a sh*tty time, and this would put you in the right mood to work, and you wouldn't get ill." --Irmgard Keun, writing to her lover, Arnold Strauss.