Book Review: Journey into the Past seems more a short story than a novella. The pages fly past and the plot is simple while the emotions are deep. This is a romantic (in all senses of the word) story that turns on what happens when two people discover their love just as they separate. While apart, they and the world alter drastically. The author asks: can love remain unchanged? Published posthumously, in Journey Into the Past, as always Stefan Zweig plumbs our feelings, captures our hearts, and touches the soul. Full of longing, the plot heads speedily and directly to the only possible conclusion. But Zweig shatters the story with a chilling description of a Nazi march through the streets of Heidelberg. Just as the two lovers seek to recapture what they once had, so Zweig looks back on the world he had lost. The reader can only emerge as disturbed as the protagonist. Although his writing might bend toward melodrama, become overly passionate, and always contain a subterranean obsession, it was never as simple as it seemed on first reading. Journey Into the Past is an exercise in nostalgia and regret, told with tender care. [3½★]
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