The Post-Office Girl

By Stefan Zweig
Translated from the German by Joel Rotenberg

2009 PEN Translation Prize Finalist

Christine toils in a provincial post office in post–World War I Austria, a country gripped by unemployment. Out of the blue, a telegram arrives from Christine's rich American aunt inviting her to a resort in the Swiss Alps. Christine is immediately swept up into a world of inconceivable wealth and unleashed desire. She feels herself utterly transformed: nothing is impossible. But then, abruptly, her aunt cuts her loose. Christine returns to the post office, where yes, nothing will ever be the same.

Christine meets Ferdinand, a bitter war veteran and disappointed architect, who works construction jobs when he can get them. They are drawn to each other, even as they are crushed by a sense of deprivation, of anger and shame. Work, politics, love, sex: everything is impossible for them. Life is meaningless, unless, through one desperate and decisive act, they can secretly remake their world from within.

Cinderella meets Bonnie and Clyde in Zweig's haunting and hard-as-nails novel, completed during the 1930s, as he was driven by the Nazis into exile, but left unpublished at the time of his death. The Post-Office Girl, available here for the first time in English, transforms our image of a modern master's achievement.

View the reading group guide (PDF)

Reviews

Stefan Zweig was a late and magnificent bloom from the hothouse of fin de siècle Vienna...The posthumous publication of a Zweig novel affords an opportunity to revisit this gifted writer...The Post-Office Girl is captivating.
— The Wall Street Journal

A brilliant writer.
— The New York Times

Zweig is one of the masters of the short story and novella, and by 'one of the masters' I mean that he’s up there with Maupassant, Chekhov, James, Poe, or indeed anyone you care to name.
— Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian [UK]

Also see:

Chess Story By Stefan Zweig Introduction by Peter Gay New translation by Joel Rotenberg A new English translation of the international psychological thriller Schachnovelle.

Beware of Pity By Stefan Zweig Translated from the German by Phyllis and Trevor Blewitt Introduction by Joan Acocella The most widely read author writing in German prior to the rise of the Nazis, Zweig captures the torment of betrayal in a powerful study of affliction.

Sign up for our free email newsletters for updates and special offers on NYRB books.