A doctor in the Dutch East Indies torn between his medical duty and his own tortured emotions; a middle-aged maidservant whose devotion to her master leads her to commit a terrible act; a hotel waiter whose love for an unapproachable aristocratic beauty culminates in an almost lyrical death; and a Russian prisoner-of-war longing to be home again. In these four stories, Stefan Zweig shows his extraordinary gift for the acute analysis of emotional dilemmas. These tragic and moving novellas of the human condition are played out against cosmopolitan and colonial backgrounds in the first half of the twentieth century.