ZWEIG, Arnold; [Eric SUTTON, Trans.] ~ De Vriendt Goes Home.

FIRST UK PRINTING. William Heinemann Ltd, London: 1934.

Crown 8vo., publisher's brick red cloth ruled in blind to both boards and lettered in gilt to backstrip; housed in the original pictorial dustwrapper priced 3'6 net to spine and bearing the initials of SA [?] to the lower corner of the front panel; featuring a figure facing a wall; THE BOOK very good ++, a little bumping to spine tips and corners; with light scattered foxing to the outer edges of the text block and the prelims; early bookseller sticker to front paste down and light offsetting to end leaves; THE WRAPPER similarly very good ++, the front panel in particular vibrant and bright; with some small brown spots to lower panel; creased and a little darkened along folds, and some nicks, chips, and short closed tears to edges, most so to the head of spine; a couple of longer closed tears (the longest 3cm in length) extending into the rear panel; repaired internally with tape. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. FIRST UK PRINTING, in the second issue dustwrapper, repriced 3s. 6d. net (with the cancelled price above) to the lower panel. Zweig's novel, set in Palestine, and based on the life and death of a Dutch Jew, Jacob Israel de Haan, who was assassinated by the Haganah for his anti-Zionist activities in 1924, in part for his relationships with young men. Arnold Zweig was born in Poland in 1887, and from a young age was strongly influenced by the works of Friedrich Nietzsche. Volunteering for the German army upon the outbreak of WWI, he was serving on the Western Front when news of the Jewish census (Judenzählung) reached him. "The Judenzählung was a reflection of unheard sadness for Germany's sin and our agony", he wrote in one letter at the time, "If there was no antisemitism in the army, the unbearable call to duty would be almost easy." Having once been a fervent supporter of war, he subsequently became a pacifist, believing that the war pitted Jews against Jews. In the 1920s he became interested in the works of Freud, and the pair enjoyed an animated and friendly correspondence for a number of years. When the Nazi party took power in 1933, Zweig went into exile in Palestine, and it was there that he wrote 'De Vriendt Goes Home'. In it, a young Zionist, recently immigrated to Palestine from Eastern Europe, kills the Dutch Jew De Vriendt against a background of the encounters between Zionism, socialism and psychoanalysis. Zweig's complex portrait depicts three competing societies; Jewish, Arab and British, and situates his protagonist at the centre. Despite being "full of learning, sensitive, devout" he meets the same tragic end. One Times reviewer wrote that whilst the "scene...is narrower...its theme is as wide: tolerance." Zweig later went on to be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature a grand total of seven times. Scarce in the dustwrapper.

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good ++
JACKET: Very Good ++