Amok, Star Above the Forest

I rank Amok up there with The Invisible Collection and Buchmendel, my favorite Stefan Zweig stories.  As in many of his other stories, it is told second hand, through the eyes of someone who met one of the protagonists, from whom he heard it.  This tends to keep the reader at a distance from the events, as if we were being told a legend.  It's the story of a doctor who takes a job at a colonial outpost.  He falls in love with a proud, aristocratic married woman who comes to him for a secret abortion, which he won't give her, not because it is immoral, but because her demeanor was too haughty for his tastes.  He changes his mind, goes into the city in search of her, but in her desperation she had already decided on a more dangerous remedy.

It's a tragic story about those who repent too late, those whose devotion fails the people to whom they are devoted, and those who get themselves into knotty situations that they try to cover up, when a little more strength of character would have enabled them to either resolve the problem in a more honest way or avoid it altogether.

This collection also has Leporella, which I had read before, and Star Above the Forest,  a beautiful but also tragic story about hopeless, one sided love across barriers of social class that leads to despair. Obviously, this is not the book for you if you are looking for happy endings!