I planned a lot to choose my first German novel(la) that I would read in original, and ended up buying many wonderful books and none of them I read seriously to finish. Then one fine day, when my teacher in the first class handed out the reading assignment of 9 pages that is full of words, I thought, no wonder, he likes to torment us. The students were supposed to read and discuss after 3 weeks, and I just noted the date on the printed sheets. When the date came close, and my classmates reminded each other of that assignment, I was not excited, rather worried about the number of pages. And the author? I know nothing about him, and had little idea what the story was about.
Just not to appear stupid, I decided to read it on 28th November, because once you skip homework, you keep on skipping and I do not want to fall into that habit. Later I found out that it was coincidently the author's birthday! I took out my pens, marker and dictionary and started to read. The second paragraph was a bit hard for me to follow, but I kept on. Every single time I was expecting some suspense, deception and tricks, but no! Another struggle was the last paragraph. Even then, I was expecting some surprise.
But all it turned out to be a beautiful and heartrending story of a collector.
How wonderful the story is! I am deeply moved by every emotion that was depicted in the story. Be it the passion, the emotions, happiness of the man whose whole existence is around his collections, the support and love and caring of his family members towards him, and the kindness of the visitor. My most memorable and touching moments had been when the collector was showing his maps to the visitor and how beautifully with subtleness the author described the change of emotions of every person present there.
The last scene of the story (the passage where I struggled and read 3+ times) brought tears in my eyes when I finally deciphered it. Can that be possible? 2.5 hours of reading and I had been transported to a different world, a world full of love, passion, hope from the sordid and sickening world.
Thank you, Mr. Stefan Zweig. It was pleasure knowing you! I am so happy knowing about you that you were from Austria, the country I feel home at.
This is needless to say one of the best stories I read, and it is my first read German novella.