Beware of Pity

Stefan Zweig's tragic novel of guilt, yearning, and the danger of pity, which inspired Wes Anderson's The Grand Budapest Hotel.

"Original and powerful." --The New York Times

The only novel Zweig--one of the most popular authors of the 20th century--completed and published during his lifetime, Beware of Pity is a heartrending tale of unequal affection, unintended consequences, and a world falling to pieces.

In 1913, young second lieutenant Hofmiller discovers the terrible danger of pity. Stationed at the edge of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, he is invited to a party by a rich local landowner, who also happens to have a pretty daughter. But when Hofmiller asks the girl to dance he unleashes a fatal chain of consequences. He had no idea she was lame, and finds himself in an agony of shamed embarrassment. So begins a series of visits, motivated by pity, which relieves his guilt but gives her a dangerous glimmer of hope.

Stefan Zweig's only full-length novel has inspired multiple stage adaptations and was the starting point for Wes Anderson's film The Grand Budapest Hotel. Unfolding in a breathless sweep from Hofmiller's initial mistake, it displays at full length all the psychological insight and emotional intensity known to readers of Zweig's bestselling novellas.

A century after it was first written, Beware of Pity remains a devastating depiction of the betrayal of both honour and love, realised against the background of the disintegration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the beginnings of the First World War.