Stefan Zweig
Chess
“Zweig is one of the masters of the short story and novella, and by ‘one of the masters’ I mean that he’s up there with Maupassant, Chekhov, James, Poe, or indeed anyone you care to name”
Penguin, 2017 (originally published 1942)
Stefan Zweig's classic novella of obsession, madness and chess
In 1941 a cruise ship is heading to Buenos Aires, and on board a group of eager passengers challenge the reigning world chess champion to a match. At first they lose pitifully, until a kind stranger aids by whispering instructions to them - he is a masterful chess player, and as they play, the game itself draws the stranger closer and closer to its secrets.
Stefan Zweig's acclaimed novella Chess is a disturbing, intensely dramatic depiction of the cost of obsession, set in a Central Europe traumatized by the psychological influence of Nazism.
About the Author
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian writer. At the height of his literary career in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world. Zweig was raised in Vienna, Austria-Hungary.