My Three Lives was Stefan Zweig’s working title for his memoir The World of Yesterday. Matuschek uses the title here to reference the three major phases in Zweig’s life — his years of apprenticeship, his years of success as a professional working writer in Salzburg, and finally his years of exile in Britain, the USA and Brazil.

Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources, Matuschek recounts the eventful life of a writer spoilt by success, a life lived in the shadow of two world wars, and which ended tragically in a suicide pact. Including the sort of personal detail conspicuously absent from Zweig’s memoir, this biography, translated from the German by Allan Blunden and published by Pushkin Press in 2011, offers us a privileged view into the private world of a master of psychological insight.

Oliver Matuschek has co-authored several documentaries and has published numerous works, most recently I Know the Magic of Writing: Catalogue and History of the Autograph Collection of Stefan Zweig (2005). Professor Rüdiger Görner is the Head of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Film and Director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary, University of London.