Chess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig’s final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942. It is the only story in which Zweig looks at Nazism, and he does so with characteristic emphasis on the psychological. Travelers by ship from New York to Buenos Aires find that on board with them is the world champion of chess, an arrogant and unfriendly man. They come together to try their skills against him and are soundly defeated. Then a mysterious passenger steps forward to advise them and their fortunes change. How he came to possess his extraordinary grasp of the game of chess and at what cost lie at the heart of Zweig’s story.
This new translation of Chess Story brings out the work’s unusual mixture of high suspense and poignant reflection.
"Stefan Zweig was a dark and unorthodox artist; it’s good to have him back." — Salman Rushdie
"Zweig’s fictional masterpiece evokes the point at which Europe was pitched into chaos, beginning with a cavalry officer’s faux-pas in a fusty drawing room, and concluding with the bullet that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand….Zweig constructs a devastating account of what happens when pity is misconstrued as love and brilliantly relays the catastrophic effects of arousing unwanted passion." — The Guardian (UK)
"In Zweig’s fiction, someone in the story, in a way everyone, has a terrible secret. Secrets are integral to adventure stories [and] the experience of reading Zweig is not so much of entering the world of the story as of plunging inward and dreaming the story." — Rachel Cohen, Bookforum
"Admired by readers as diverse as Freud, Einstein, Toscanini, Thomas Mann and Herman Goering." — Edwin McDowell, The New York Times
Chess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig’s final achievement, completed in Brazilian exile and sent off to his American publisher only days before his suicide in 1942. It is the only story in which Zweig looks at Nazism, and he does so with characteristic emphasis on the psychological. Travelers by ship from New York to Buenos Aires find that on board with them is the world champion of chess, an arrogant and unfriendly man. They come together to try their skills against him and are soundly defeated. Then a mysterious passenger steps forward to advise them and their fortunes change. How he came to possess his extraordinary grasp of the game of chess and at what cost lie at the heart of Zweig’s story.
This new translation of Chess Story brings out the work’s unusual mixture of high suspense and poignant reflection.
Praise
"Stefan Zweig was a dark and unorthodox artist; it’s good to have him back." — Salman Rushdie
"Zweig’s fictional masterpiece evokes the point at which Europe was pitched into chaos, beginning with a cavalry officer’s faux-pas in a fusty drawing room, and concluding with the bullet that killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand….Zweig constructs a devastating account of what happens when pity is misconstrued as love and brilliantly relays the catastrophic effects of arousing unwanted passion." — The Guardian (UK)
"In Zweig’s fiction, someone in the story, in a way everyone, has a terrible secret. Secrets are integral to adventure stories [and] the experience of reading Zweig is not so much of entering the world of the story as of plunging inward and dreaming the story." — Rachel Cohen, Bookforum
"Admired by readers as diverse as Freud, Einstein, Toscanini, Thomas Mann and Herman Goering." — Edwin McDowell, The New York Times
