Virtuoso psychograms of human passion. Stefan Zweig had a particular sympathy for those driven by their player natures and passions. His masterful novellas bring to life the moment when the roulette ball falls, a friend becomes an enemy, and life changes fundamentally. This anthology gathers Zweig's seven most beautiful stories, including the famous "Chess Story." Stefan Zweig's (1881-1942) prose is unmistakable. It combines intimacy with restraint, passionately describing the finest psychological nuances with high formal elegance. Story after story, the insightful connoisseur of souls and world literate wrote "a great biography of his time," as Rüdiger Görner notes in the afterword to this volume. The present selection spans from the early masterpiece "Burning Secret" (1914) to Zweig's later and perhaps most famous tales.