In Ostend, journalist and author Volker Weidermann lyrically recounts “the summer before the dark”, when a coterie of artists, intellectuals, drunks, revolutionaries, and madmen found the edge of fascism and total war.

Ostend is the true story of two of the 20th century’s great writers, written with a novelist’s eye for pacing, chronology, and language – a dazzling work of historical nonfiction.

“Dazzling… Graceful. For such a slim book to convey with such poignancy the extinction of a generation of ‘Great Europeans is a triumph’ ” – The Sunday Telegraph.

The full title of the book is: “Ostend: Stefan Zwig, Joseph Roth, and the Summer Before the Dark”. Published by Pantheon NY (January 2016).

.Compiled and reviewed by Clara Rayess