She was at that crucial age when a women begins to regret having stayed faithful to a husband she never really loved, when the glowing sunset colors of her beauty offer her one last, urgent choice between maternal and feminine love. At such a moment a life that seemed to have chosen its course long ago is questioned once again, for the last time the magic compass needle of the will hovers between final resignation and the hope of erotic experience.

Religion did not play a central role in his education. Zweig had a warm relationship with Theodor Herzl the founder of Zionism whom he met when Herzl was still literary editor of the Neue Freie Presse then Vienna's main newspaper; Herzl accepted for publication some of Zweig's early essays. Biography
Zweig was the son of Moritz Zweig (1845–1926) a wealthy Jewish textile manufacturer and Ida Brettauer (1854–1938) from a Jewish banking family.

At the height of his literary career in the 1920s and 1930s he was one of the most famous writers in the world.