Letter from an Unknown Woman

Letter from an Unknown is a short novella in epistolary form of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, first published in 1922. The date of origin is unknown.

Content

The frame story begins when a writer returns to his hometown of Vienna after a mountain holiday. In his post, he finds a long letter with no return address in which an unfamiliar woman describes her life, which was determined by the unrequited love for him.

As a thirteen- year-old, lonely girl, she falls in love with the reader, who lives in the same apartment building with her. The love continues even as she moved with her mother from Vienna to Innsbruck. At 18, she uses her first opportunity after return Vienna, and studied every day the house of the writer on to watch him until he finally responds. He can not remember them though, but shows interest in her and invites her to dinner. When he then still asks the girl to his home, they spend the night together. This is repeated two more times until the author embarks on a journey and no longer asked about his return to her.

From the three nights spent together comes from a common child rearing the meantime woman that has become alone. To enable the son the life she wants for him, she earned her living as a courtesan and has various relationships with men of Vienna's upper class, who pay them. A few years later she meets in a nightclub back on the writer. This one has heard of their services and asks for a night in exchange for money. She agrees in the hope that he recognizes. But when she finds no trace of remembrance with him, she leaves the next morning, angry and disappointed his apartment. When her child died of the flu, she wrote a letter to the writer, in which she portrays him her story. She points at the end of the letter, it was also probably the flu. But he would get in any case until after her death the letter.

The writer tries to overcome by the contents of the letter, to reconstruct the various encounters with the woman, but can only fragmentary ( " like a dream " ) remember.

Book

Single

• The Letter from an Unknown, Lehmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung ( German poet manuscripts, Volume 13, ed. V. Hanns Martin Elster), Dresden 1922
• Letter from an Unknown. Narrative, S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 978-3-596-13024-5

In collecting editions

• Amok. Stories of passion, Island, Leipzig 1922
• Master novellas, S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2001, ISBN 978-3-596-14991-9

Audiobook

• Letter from an Unknown, German Grammophon in 1963, read by Ruth Leuwerik and Helmut Käutner
• Letter from an Unknown, audiobook, Hamburg 2009, unabridged reading by Felix von Manteuffel and Leslie Malton, ISBN 978-3-89903-612-1

Radioplay

• Stefan Zweig: Letter from an Unknown. Director: Martin Engler, Contributors: Linda Olsansky, 53 min, RBB, 2012.

Films

• The novel was first filmed in 1931 under the Title 24 hours in the life of a woman by director Robert country.

• 2001 filmed the French director Jacques Deray the amendment for television; starring Irène Jacob, Christopher Thompson, Karlheinz Hackl and Joachim Bißmeier.

• In 2004, the Chinese director Xu Jinglei turned another film under the title Yi ge mosheng nüren de laixin.