Late Fame

A rediscovered classic satire of literary celebrity, now an acclaimed film starring Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee.

One ordinary evening, Eduard Saxberger arrives home to find the fulfilment of a long-forgotten wish in his sitting room: a visitor has come to tell him that the youth of Vienna has discovered his poetic genius. Saxberger has written nothing for thirty years, yet he now realises that he is more than merely an unremarkable civil servant, after all—he is a venerable poet, for whom Late Fame is inevitable, if, that is, his new acolytes are to be believed.

Arthur Schnitzler was one of the most admired, provocative European writers of the twentieth century. The Nazis attempted to burn all of his work, but his archive was miraculously saved and, with it, Late Fame. First published posthumously, only in 2014, it is a treasure, a perfect satire of literary self-regard and charlatanism.

Part of the Pushkin Press Classics series: timeless storytelling by icons of literature, hand-picked from around the globe.

Translated by Alexander Starritt

Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931) was one of the most influential European writers of the twentieth century, and is perhaps best known to British readers for his novella Dream Story. He qualified as a doctor but was increasingly driven to a career in writing, resulting in celebrated plays, novellas, and novels that explore the great existential subjects of the modern age. Ever controversial and ahead of his time, he was close friends with Zweig and Freud, and a member of the 'Young Vienna' circle of writers who regularly met at a café nicknamed 'Megalomania'—the very same clique and café he satirises so deliciously in Late Fame. Pushkin Press also publishes Casanova's Return to Venice, Fräulein Else, and Dying.

Alexander Starritt is the author of the novels We Germans, The Beast, and Drayton and Mackenzie. His translations of The Unhappiness of Being a Single Man by Franz Kafka and A Chess Story by Stefan Zweig are also published by Pushkin Press.

'A witty satire that will immerse you in the world of these turn-of-the-century Viennese bohemians' Times

'Brilliant... wholeheartedly comic, albeit with a touch of pathos' New Yorker

'Hilarious, unbelievably finely spun and ironic... A great literary discovery' Die Zeit