愛情能否長久？舊情能不能復燃？
身分地位懸殊的戀人，被迫分隔兩地，戰爭阻斷了他們最後一絲牽繫，生死不明。
多年後，戀人聚首，重遊海德堡。
然而，景物依舊，人事全非，
往日的種種美好，只能留在回憶之中……
A deep study of the uneasy heart by one of the masters of the psychological novel, Journey into the Past, published here for the first time in America, is a novella that was found among Zweig’s papers after his death. Investigating the strange ways in which love, in spite of everything — time, war, betrayal — can last, Zweig tells the story of Ludwig, an ambitious young man from a modest background who falls in love with the wife of his rich employer. His love is returned, and the couple vow to live together, but then Ludwig is dispatched on business to Mexico, and while he is there the First World War breaks out. With travel and even communication across the Atlantic shut down, Ludwig makes a new life in the New World. Years later, however, he returns to Germany to find his beloved a widow and their mutual attraction as strong as ever. But is it possible for love to survive precisely as the impossible?
★本書中譯版《行向昨日的旅程》由遠流出版。
★本書原文書名: Reise in die Vergangenheit
作者簡介
史蒂芬．褚威格（Stefan Zweig, 1881~1942）
褚威格出生於維也納的猶太富裕家庭，父親經營紡織廠，母親來自義大利銀行世家。他自小立志成為作家，十六歲出版了第一本詩集。在維也納與柏林就讀期間，主修哲學與文學。畢業後，曾與維也納的《新自由報》（Neue Freie Presse）文化副刊及前衛雜誌《青年》（Young Vienna）等合作，參與維也納的文化運動。
一次世界大戰後，褚威格遷居薩爾斯堡，密集寫作。一九三四年，他結集短篇及中篇小說作品出版。同年，因納粹勢力興起而遠走倫敦，成為「亡命敵國的異鄉人」。之後前往紐約，最後在一九三六年定居於巴西。一九四二年狂歡節後不久，褚威格與妻子在家中自殺身亡。
他的代表作品包括：〈一個陌生女子的來信〉、〈蠱〉、〈一個女人一生中的二十四小時〉、〈情感的迷惘〉、〈行向昨日的旅程〉、《最初的經歷》、《棋的故事》、《愛與同情》、《昨日世界──一個歐洲人的回憶》（自傳）、《人類的群星閃耀時》、《感謝蒙田》、《羅曼羅蘭》……等。他的小說結合了細膩的心理描寫、動人的敘事手法、質樸而精準的修辭，並且帶著濃濃的人道關懷，在世界文壇獨樹一格，歷久彌新。
Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), novelist, biographer, poet, and translator, was born in Vienna into a wealthy Austrian Jewish family. During the 1930s, he was one of the best-selling writers in Europe, and was among the most translated German-language writers before the Second World War. With the rise of Nazism, he moved from Salzburg to London (taking British citizenship), to New York, and finally to Brazil, where he committed suicide with his wife. New York Review Books has published Zweig’s novels The Post-Office Girl and Beware of Pity as well as the novella Chess Story.
Anthea Bell is the recipient of the 2009 Schlegel-Tieck Prize for her translation of Stefan Zweig’s Burning Secret. In 2002 she won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and the Helen and
Kurt Wolff Prize for her translation of W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz.
