Burning Secret Novella by Stefan Zweig Review

Burning Secret Novella by Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig has a knack for being cruel and unusual to his characters. Almost all his stories are extremely depressing. This novella is of this kind. This novella is about a Baron who is trying to seduce a married lady. This baron is on vacation and has nothing better to do. He decides to use the child of the lady to seduce her. He first befriends Edgard. When the kid becomes useless to his ploy he behaves quite harshly to the child. This scenario is really quite common. You can easily observe it in the relationships between step sons and step fathers. At first, step daddy is nice. Later, they are too cruel. This story then becomes a fight between the child and the Baron over the heart of the lady. From this experience, the child learns that adults are lairs.  It really is quite the cruel novella. For this reason, I think Stefan Zweig's "Burning Secret" is 5 star worthy. I think it got made into a movie. I just learned about it 5 seconds ago.