Summer Before the Dark | 
Zweig on the power of reading.
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Was so pleased to get this from the library.
pickWonderful 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).
pickIn 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
Walking towards Ostende while listening to Weidermann's "Ostende 1936"...#belgium #ostende #travelitsy #audiobook
"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
"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.
