Hot off the Ancient Presses!

In my ever-increasing need to find something new to read from the plethora of recently published books, I often fail to reach out and take a chance on titles that have been around since I was knee high to a rake of nettles in the back garden of our first proper home. I remember standing outside at the age of four surrounded by a wilderness of overgrown plants and feeling like I’d landed in an untamed jungle: pure bliss. Now, when I stand in the middle of a bookshop, I feel something of the same wonder as all around me are books, rows and rows of them, floor to ceiling, wall to wall, a sanctuary of unread treasures waiting just for me: pure bliss.

Last week, a beautifully presented classic replete with crimson cover adorned by Heinrich Kuhn’s Woman at a Mirror, called out to me as I cast my beady eye over the classics section, recently doubled in size for the pleasure of the more discerning reader. First published in Germany in 1920, Anthea Bell’s recent translation introduces us to a novelette by Stefan Zweig with the intriguing title, Fear. I had time to quickly scan the opening paragraph full of movement and the promised emotion: "As Irene came down the stairs from her lover’s apartment, again that pointless fear suddenly overwhelmed her: All at once there was a shape like a black spinning top circling before her eyes, her knees froze in dreadful rigidity, and she had to catch hold of the banister rail in haste to keep herself from falling abruptly forwards."

Needless to say, this delightful treasure no longer rests at the alphabetical end of all things deemed classical. It was beside me when I went to bed last-night, is beside me as I write, and will not leave my side till I have gobbled it all up.