Chess Story (New York Review Books Classics)
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Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
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Average Customer Rating: 
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 833.912
EAN: 9781590171691
ISBN: 1590171691
Label: NYRB Classics
Manufacturer: NYRB Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 104
Publication Date: 2005-12-09
Publisher: NYRB Classics
Release Date: 2005-12-09
Studio: NYRB Classics
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Editorial Reviews:
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Chess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig’s final achievement, completed in his 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 its psychological damage. He dramatizes the internal destruction inflicted by tyranny. The work is also one of the rare pieces of literature to bring alive the complex and overpowering feelings associated with the great game of chess. Travelers sailing from New York to Buenos Aires find that on board with them is the world champion of chess. He is, as they soon discover, an arrogant and unfriendly man. They gather 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, which is also a meditation on the burden of memory and the ways in which resistance and vulnerability are entwined in the human spirit.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: They write books about chess now?
Comment: I haven't read a book I liked this much in a long time. At 80 pages, it's hard not to want to analyze more into it than was actually intended, but the dichotomies of black-and-white chess pieces, and the clearly opposed characters of the traumatized intelligent Dr. B and his boot-clad half-imbecile opponent Czentovic, seem to invite nationalism and allegory.
Peter Gay's introduction claims that critics often fault Zweig for holding his cards to close to his chest. His characters, who Freud lo...more I haven't read a book I liked this much in a long time. At 80 pages, it's hard not to want to analyze more into it than was actually intended, but the dichotomies of black-and-white chess pieces, and the clearly opposed characters of the traumatized intelligent Dr. B and his boot-clad half-imbecile opponent Czentovic, seem to invite nationalism and allegory.
Peter Gay's introduction claims that critics often fault Zweig for holding his cards to close to his chest. His characters, who Freud loved, are broad-stroked mysteries, impeccably flawed. They may be consistent, but there are details that may be expected in literature that Zweig chooses to leave out.
It's not enough to hamper my enjoyment of this book. After reading so much dense material this year, this book was such a treat. However, it reminded me of "No Country For Old Men" in that the simplicity of the story hid the fact that the characters are powerhouses, twisted and real.
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Summary: No escape from pain
Comment: As summarized by another reviewer, the story takes place on a cruise ship en route from New York to Buenos Aires in 1941. The world chess champion, Mirko Czentovic, is on board. Czentovic is a chess prodigy who is singularly ungifted in other areas of the intellect and social graces. Also on board is Dr. B, a former solicitor for the Austrian imperial family who is traveling to South America as a refugee from the Nazi regime.
At the outset, considering Czentovic's isolated and emotionally deprived childhood, I was prepared to allow him his arrogance and conceit. Acknowledged, he was a master at chess and his boorish behavior could be excused. When Dr. B becomes peripherally involved in the chess match and exhibits a mastery of moves, it becomes clear that this man has somehow or other been absorbed into the exalted realm of chess. As his story unfolds, the reader enters the world of isolation and solitary that Dr. B endured at the hands of his Nazi tormenters. Zweig is so masterful at the depiction of the incarceration and the man's mental salvation through the game of chess that we as readers are carried along so forcibly that we leave the confines of our homes for the world of Dr. B. Every emotion he experienced, every racing of his pulse, every fearful moment, his ultimate dissociation of his personality and his breakdown are experienced by the reader. The descriptions are powerful and cause a visceral reaction that is astonishing. As I was reading, I started to note a racing pulse and sweating and a sense of uncontrollable foreboding. As the story raced to its conclusion, I had the urge to shout, "Halt! Don't play again!" I wept when I set the book down. The tears were for Dr. B, all of the victims of the Nazi carnage and perhaps also a reaction to what came to pass, the suicide of the author. This gem of a small book explores and disturbs the human psyche like no other.
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Summary: Salvation and Curse
Comment: "Chess Story" (Original "Schachnovelle", previously published in English as "The Royal Game"), was Stefan Zweig's final work prior to his tragic death. It is a poignant, finely tuned psychological drama that will long linger in the reader's mind.
Chess Story centres around two extraordinary chess players. One is the world champion, Mirko Czentovic, who travels across the world for tournaments. The other is the enigmatic Dr. B., who claims not to have seen a chessboard in more than twenty years. The two are opposites in terms of personality, background and in their paths bringing them to a chance meeting on an ocean liner en route from New York to Buenos Aires. The narrator, who exhibits traits of an aspiring psychologist "passionately interested in monomaniacs", finds his first subject in the twenty-one year old chess prodigy, who otherwise exhibits poor education, intellect, and crude social behaviour. To satisfy his curiosity he instigates a game of chess between Czentovic and a group of "amateur chess lovers". Dr. B. watching the game in passing, is suddenly drawn into it, advising the hapless amateurs so that they reach a draw. His manifest expertise at the game as well as his strange conduct intrigues the narrator as much as the reader.
Using language that is sparse yet precise in detail, the first-person observer, although commenting on the game, is more fascinated by his subjects' personality and psyche. The narrator's inquisitiveness, heightened by Dr. B.'s unusual behaviour, leads him to follow his subject as he hurriedly flees the game room. Out on deck, Dr. B. eventually shares his personal story and recounts the recent harrowing events that forced him abruptly into exile from his native Austria. The narrator becomes at the same time listener and astute analyst. Dr. B.'s account reveals why chess for him has been both a salvation and a danger to his survival: his "involvement" with chess had gone beyond what a person can endure without dangerous consequences for the rest of his life.
Zweig's ability to build emotional tension and drama while keeping his choice of words neutral and objective is superb. The fluidity of language is maintained in the English translation. The story's impact is deepened by Zweig giving the narrator the dual role of audience and commentator. The intensity of the author's fascination with diametrically opposed characters and the clash of cultures they represent is evident throughout the novel. Certain parallels between Dr. B. and Zweig himself come easily to mind. Chess Story conveys a premonition of events occurring in the author's own life. Zweig, a well known and widely read Austrian author of biographies, essays and fiction in the first half of the twentieth century, left behind a remarkable opus of work. He fled Austria in 1935 anticipating the political upheaval in his country resulting from the rise of Nazism in Germany. Shortly after completing the novella in 1942, written during the previous three years, the author and his wife committed suicide while in exile in Brazil. Even after more than sixty years Chess Story remains pertinent today, both in its historical context and its primary subject matter. Peter Gay's informative introduction adds to the understanding of the story's context. [Friederike Knabe]
Customer Rating:
Summary: das beste Buch auf der Welt
Comment: This is one of the best books that I have ever read. I just finished reading the original German version for the second time and came here to see if it is available in English for all of my non-German speaking friends.
This book is basically a psychological thriller that takes you inside the divided mind of one Dr. B and locks you there just as securely as his Nazi tormentors ever could through the final endgame. I cannot vouch for the quality of this specific translation, but the original work is a masterpiece.
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Summary: One of the best and most imprtant short stories of the WWII era
Comment: This is truly a must read. Important historically, emotionally and I couldn't put it down. Be warned - I was so disturbed by this book I couln't fall asleep the night I read it.
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