In 1913, a young second lieutenant discovers the terrible dangers of pity. He had no idea the girl was lame when he asked her to dance-his compensatory afternoon calls relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope. Stefan Zweig's only novel is a devastatingly unindulgent portrayal of the torment of the betrayal of both honor and love, realized against the background of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 into a wealthy Viennese Jewish family. He studied at the Universities of Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig traveled widely, living in Salzburg, London and New York before settling in Brazil where he and his wife were found dead in 1942.