Irene Wagner leads a comfortable and carefree life with her husband and two children. Yet after eight years of marriage, dancing, theater, opera, and other social activities seem predictable and bland to her. Thus, more out of romantic fantasy than out of true desire, she begins a relationship with a young pianist. But soon a woman discovers her when she leaves her lover's apartment and Irene is forced to give in to a terrible blackmail. The terror of being discovered by her husband and of losing everything she owns and now discovers, she needs and loves so much, will plunge her into a stormy nightmare. Written in 1913 and first published almost a decade later, Miedo is one of Stefan Zweig's most breathtaking nouvelles, with an ending as surprising for the protagonist as it is for the reader.
