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Chess Story (New York Review Books Classics)

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"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]

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.

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.

This long story is called a `novella' in the original version. It is one of Zweig's most famous works, and rightly so. I am not Zweig's hottest fan, but this text is blameless.
Chess provides the frame for the story, but the core is something else: the fight for survival and sanity under psychological torture.
The hero of the story is Dr.B, from a well known Austrian family connected to church and court circles. Dr.B had worked as a lawyer dealing in asset management, which meant in the 1930s: hiding wealth from the rapacious claws of the Nazis. After the Nazis take over Austria, Dr.B is among the first arrestees, but he is not submitted to camp treatment. Rather he is put under a kind of luxurious isolation torture and also patiently and time-consumingly interrogated about the whereabouts of his clients' assets.
Luckily he finds a book with 150 chess cases, which keeps him sane for some months. After he has replayed all the 150 matches countless times, he dives deeper and deeper into chess and finally submits to a mental breakdown, following months of playing chess in his mind against himself.
He becomes useless to his captors and is let go. He emigrates.

The story finds him on a steamer from NY to Buenos Aires, where he meets our narrator. Now we are into present tense chess. The star on the ship is the current chess world champion, a youngish and boorish man from Hungary. A wealthy chess amateur from the US is willing to pay the champion for games on board. Dr.B accidentally stumbles into the scene and interferes in a match. He shocks the champion and surprises the others. He accepts the challenge to play `just one' match against the champion, the next day.
In the meantime he tells his story to the narrator, and we also learn that he is under medical instruction not to play chess any more, for the sake of his mental health. Imagine something like Chess-aholics Anonymous.
A perfect story. The chess matches on the ship are a suitable frame for the captivity and interrogation scenes. The language is simple and tense, very suitable for the purpose.

(Personally I can relate to the poisoning, if obviously not under the same harsh conditions. As a student I tried to use chess for relaxation during exam times, but that was a disastrous idea. I gave it up and started playing darts.)

A good writer makes you taste red, an excellent writer can convince you that tomorrow our sky may be green and our trees blue. Stefan Zweig is a good writer. How triumphant I felt when Dr. B was first introduced and how pained I felt whenever the book was set aside and thoughts came to me, thoughts about his imprisonment. The book, oh it was a joy to read. Stefan Zweig is a good writer. For the first thirty five pages of the eighty four, I was watching a thriller, hearing a moving piece of music beckoning me to battle. It seemed, at the time, that I would read the text and reread it in an hour, maybe an hour and a few minutes'an incredible feat for somebody who loves to stop and ponder. And then came the line, "If you will bear with me for half an hour...." Crushed. The pace of the story halted and, like Dr. B near the end, this reader felt increasingly impatient as time passed.

Stefan Zweig, at least in CHESS STORY, is not an excellent writer; in a climatic moment'I do not want to spoil it'the veil was lifted and revealed the magician with no pants, ineptly struggling to capture the escaped white pigeon. Suddenly it seemed to me that CHESS STORY was absurd'a story of far too many coincidences. What are the chances, after all, of two individuals with exceedingly rare histories meeting one another on a boat? What are the chances, after all, for many of the story's events to truly happen? Often in fiction, unlikely'almost impossible'events occur, but an excellent writer can remove the disbelief. Such was not the case here.

Yes, I acknowledge that Zweig offered much to toss around mentally. I was almost compelled to declare the short piece brilliant because of how dense the themes were for the amount of space they were exposed. However, the more I thought'tossed around mentally'the more I realized how much effort it was to expound each theme, how many of my own interpretations I was forced to push onto the story in order to reach a satisfying conclusion. Alas, I am compelled to say that CHESS STORY is too short for the matters it deals with; if it were longer, perhaps one of the many ideas could have been fully explored. It is an exciting read, a very satisfying read. I would have to argue, though, that it was not a very deep read. Perhaps I should try once more another day, another year? Chess enthusiasts would enjoy the work. It is short, easy to read, and at times has remarkable statements to make about the game. I wanted to love this one, I did'but I didn't.

Just before he committed suicide in 1942, Stefan Zweig completed this short novella for publication. Although it is oblique in manner and relatively light in tone, it is the only book in which Zweig directly addresses the methods of the National Socialists, who in the Anschluss of 1938 took over his country, Austria, from which Zweig himself had fled some years before.

The framework is deceptively casual. One of the passengers on an ocean liner from New York to Buenos Aires is the world chess champion, Mirko Czentovic. Something of an idiot savant, knowing nothing but chess, Czentovic has become arrogant and mercenary. But one of the passengers on the ship pays him to take on a small group of amateur players. They are unexpectedly joined by a unassuming man emerging from the shadows, who offers advice that forces the champion to a draw. How the man, known only as Dr. B, became so proficient at chess, is the subject of the long revelation that is the centerpiece of the story. It is an oblique denunciation of the methods of the occupiers of his country, but also a testament to the powers of the human spirit necessary to survive them. The match between Dr. B and Czentovic that ends the book becomes a kind of proxy for the war on freedom then being waged in Europe, and its outcome is by no means a foregone conclusion.

I got a lot of pleasure from reading this in the lovely NYRB edition, with a most readable translation by Joel Rotenberg, a fine preface by Peter Gay, and an intriguing cover by Katy Homans. But I am perhaps at a disadvantage from having recently read and reviewed Zweig's novel THE POST-OFFICE GIRL, another posthumous publication from the same press. By comparison, CHESS STORY is both less personal and less real. It cannot match the verve and depth of character of the first part of the novel, and although it avoids the dark tone of Zweig's description of depression-era Austria in the second part, it also lacks its sense of authenticity. By using chess almost as a metaphor for political oppression, Zweig (as in some of Kafka's stories) moves from physical reality into the realm of ideas. I found it fascinating, but I didn't quite believe it, and felt too little connection between the chess game on the liner and what was really happening in occupied Europe. But maybe this was as much as Zweig could manage to write openly at the time. The true depths of despair could be shown only in the taking of his life.

The somewhat vaguely titled "Chess Story" is as much a product of its time as was its author, the Austrian born Stephan Zweig. The concept at it's core, however, remains as timeless as the deceptively simple board game that serves as its muse.

Perhaps Mind Games would have been a more appropriate title as Chess, at least in its strategy and particulars, is mostly just a device for the narrative. The real story takes place in the confines of the human mind, and is one of refined cruelty in the form of sensory deprivation and the struggle of an unstimulated mind as it battles the downward spiral of insanity.

Set just after the second world war, but with the central event occurring during the war itself, we learn that the cruel captors in this tale are Nazis. Zweig himself was forced to flee Nazi occupied Europe and later took his own life while in exile. His suicide note told of a soul tormented by what his countrymen had done. It is no surprise then that Chess Story is one of his finest and most widely known works, as these inner torments and demons come vividly alive on the pages of the book.

This small "novela" can easily be read in an afternoon. Highly recommended.

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.

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.

This last piece of Zweig's fiction should be read in tandem with his memoir The World of Yesterday, one of the best in that genre. Both were completed shortly before his suicide in 1942.