Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna to a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. Recognition as a writer came early for Zweig; by the age of forty, he had already won literary fame. In 1934, with Nazism entrenched, Zweig left Austria for England, and became a British citizen in 1940. In 1941 he and his second wife went to Brazil, where they committed suicide. Zweig's best-known works of fiction are Beware of Pity (1939) and Chess (1942), but his most outstanding accomplishments were his many biographies, which were based on psychological interpretation.

Jonathan Katz was born in London in 1950 and educated in London, Munich and at Oxford, where he is currently a Fellow of Brasenose College and the University's Public Orator. His previous translations from German include works by Goethe, Theodor Storm and Joseph Roth. His translations of Six Stories by Stefan Zweig are also published by Penguin.