Set in the idyllic landscape of rural Bohemia in the 1930s, this is the tragic love story of Jarmila, the village beauty, & a toy maker who falls under her siren spell. The wife of the far older local feather-merchant, Jarmila enjoys all the pleasures her husband`s wealth can buy, yet still longs for true love which she hopes to find in her affair with the penniless toy-maker. When she conceives a child by him, he urges her to leave her husband for a life of love & freedom in New York. Guilt-ridden & suddenly facing a destitute life in a strange country, Jarmila refuses lo leave. Her devastated lover asks for one more meeting & tragedy ensues. The typescript of this novella was discovered recently at Prague University. Stefan Zweig, a friend of Ernst Weiss, believed it to be Weiss` best work. ` Weiss...displays here much of [ Stefan Zweig`s] artful unity of purpose & economy of language.`-- Chris Power, The Times Ernst Weisswas born in Brunn (now Brno) in 1884 in Bohemia. He worked as a doctor & served in World War I. In 1938, he emigrated to France, & committed suicide in 1940, the day the German troops entered Paris. Weiss` novels show expressionistic & surrealist tendencies, often expressing violent perverted sexual impulses & marked by a deep pessimism, owing something to his friend Franz Kafka.