Before us is a kind of "Freudian thriller": "Mrs. Irene descended the stairs of her lover's apartment, and again she was seized by that inexplicable fear." From the beginning to the end of the reading, Stefan Zweig, with his skillful, breathtaking hand, leads the reader into the depths of the consciousness, conscience, and secrets of a woman trapped in self-pursuit. She has just transgressed the Seventh Commandment, "Thou shalt not commit adultery." In bourgeois Viennese society of the early twentieth century, before the liberation of women, this was a disastrous step for her. In "Fear," Zweig examines our psychological mechanisms of control, desire, regret, and forgiveness, as they are torn between passions and social conventions. This is a universal and timeless novella, as the five film adaptations it has received since its publication, spanning some ninety years, will also attest. As usual, Zweig weaves a labyrinth of relationships in which the reader serves not only as a witness or judge, but as a real partner in human contradictions, the solution to which he will be able to find, together with the novel's heroine, right in the last line. "There is no expiatory guilt, as long as the conscience knows of its existence" Stefan Zweig "Love is giving what is not there - to someone who is not it" Jacques Lacan "Only a book that maintains the level on every page and sweeps me away to the last page in one breath and stops my soul, gives me complete pleasure" Stefan Zweig