My Three Lives was Stefan Zweig’s working title for The World of Yesterday, also published by Pushkin Press, and here Matuschek uses the title to reference the three major phases in Zweig’s life—the years of apprenticeship, the years of success as a professional "working writer" in Salzburg, and finally the years of exile in Britain, the USA and Brazil. Drawing on a wealth of newly available sources, Matuschek recounts the eventful life of a writer spoilt by success, which changed direction under the influence of contemporary events, and ended tragically in a suicide pact with his second wife Lotte.