Late Fame, Paperback

A hilarious takedown of celebrity and false genius, never before available in the US.

An NYRB Classics Original

One seemingly ordinary evening, Eduard Saxberger arrives home to find the fulfillment of a long-forgotten wish in his sitting room: A visitor has come to tell him that the youth of Vienna have discovered his poetic genius. Saxberger has written nothing for thirty years, yet he now realizes that he is more than merely an Unremarkable Civil Servant after all: He's a Venerable Poet for whom Late Fame is inevitable--if, that is, his new acolytes are to be believed.

Arthur Schnitzler was one of the most admired, provocative European writers of the twentieth century. The Nazis attempted to burn all of his work, but his archive was miraculously saved, and with it, Late Fame. Never published before, it is a treasure, a perfect satire of literary self-regard and charlatanism.