Chess: A Novel - Softcover

Zweig, Stefan

4.27

128,026 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0141023376 ISBN 13: 9780141023373

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2006

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On a cruiseship bound for Buenos Aires, a wealthy passenger challenges the world chess champion to a match. He accepts with a sneer. He will beat anyone, he says. But only if the stakes are high. Soon, the chess board is surrounded. At first, the challenger crumbles before the mind of the master. But then, a soft-spoken voice from the crowd begins to whisper nervous suggestions. Perfect moves, brilliant predictions. The speaker has not played a game for more than twenty years, he says. He is wholly unknown. But somehow, he is also entirely formidable...

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Review:

A brilliant writer (New York Times)

One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories (Edmund de Waal)

Stefan Zweig was a late and magnificent bloom from the hothouse of fin de siecle Vienna (The Wall Street Journal)

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 (Nick Lezard Guardian)

A new favourite writer of mine (Wes Anderson)

Perhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game (Economist)

His great achievement in short form (The Times)

From the Back Cover:

'The more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity'

On a cruiseship bound for Buenos Aires in 1941, a group of eager passengers challenge the world chess champion to a match. He accepts. He will beat anyone, he says. At first, the challenger crumbles before the mind of the master. But then, a soft-spoken voice from the crowd begins to whisper nervous suggestions. Perfect moves, brilliant predictions. The speaker has not played a game for more than twenty years, he says. He is wholly unknown. But somehow, he is also entirely formidable.

Stefan Zweig's acclaimed novella Chess is a disturbing, intensely dramatic depiction of the cost of obsession, set in a world of Mitteleuropean civilization traumatised by tyranny.

'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' Nicholas Lezard, Guardian

'His greatest achievement in short form' The Times

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