During his lifetime Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was among the most widely read German-language writers in the world. Always controversial, he fell into critical disfavor as writers and critics in a devastated postwar Europe attacked the poor literary quality of his works and excoriated his apolitical fiction as naive Habsburg nostalgia. Yet in other parts of the world, Zweig's works have enjoyed continued admiration and popularity, even canonical status.

China's Stefan Zweig unveils the extraordinary success of Zweig's novellas in China, where he has been read in an...