Regina Rodríguez Sirvent recommends the most famous book of a great classic

BarcelonaThere are episodes in history that, when they occur, "prove decisive for centuries and centuries," recalls Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) in one of his most emblematic books, The Right Moment: Great Moments in Humanity, which can be read in Catalan thanks to the translation by Maria Pous for Quaderns Crema in 2004. This is the reading that Regina Rodríguez Sirvent (Alp, 1983) recommends for this summer. The author of Popcorn at Dawn, a novel published by La Campana that was the best-selling this Sant Jordi and continues at the top of the lists of best-selling fiction books in Catalan, has chosen the most famous essay by the prolific Austrian author, also known for short novels like Letter from a Unknown Woman (1927) and biographies such as Marie Antoinette (1932). "I like it so much that while I was reading it, I thought I would have liked to have written it," she assures.

In The Right Moment: Great Moments in Humanity (1927), Zweig confronts readers with fourteen milestones that changed universal history. "He does it in a very epic, cinematic, and at the same time literary way," she assures. Among these milestones are the transatlantic connection of the telegraph, Lenin's return to Russia, the arrival at the South Pole, and the conception of the Elegy of Marienbad by Goethe. These are feats whose grandeur Zweig emphasizes in exuberant descriptions, but also highlights the anonymous, small, and intimate moments in which they must have been forged. "Zweig has the merit of knowing how to condense these great moments without missing any detail," continues Rodríguez. His two favorite episodes are "the night the "Marseillaise" anthem was written and the ups and downs of the discoverer of El Dorado, who went from having nothing to getting rich and, finally, losing it all again."