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Chess Story
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Chess Story by Stefan Zweig
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4 stars, although I might end up re-reading it and rating it 5 stars. It is a powerful story wrapped in a framework of chess.This book is on the list under the name "The Royal Game", but is better known as Chess Story (which is also a literal translation of the original German title). I read a translation simply called "Chess".
My rating: 5 stars on GoodreadsThis is a well crafted novella about, among other things, solitary confinement and how great skill in something like chess can be the flip-side of severe mental deficits. The story centers around a series of chess games between a reigning chess champion and a few chess fans while they are travelling together on a ship. One of the passengers turns out to be maybe as good a player as the chess champion, but the reason for his great skill is also the reason he probably should not play chess.
Thanks. I just bought the kindle version based on all your reviews!
Read July 2019I agree with the above! It is a short, intense story that will hold your attention right from the first sentence. I'm not adverse to long books, but I get a lot of pleasure out of well crafted and edited short works. 4*
4 starsStefan Zweig wrote a complex and thought-provoking story in only 84 pages, and structured it around one game of chess. The world chess champion, Czentovic, is playing an amateur while traveling the seas on board a ship. The amateur claims not to have played the game in twenty five years but is a skillful, practiced player. The story of his life is revealed during the game, and it explains his great love for (obsession, perhaps) the game.
Zweig uses this structure to reveal a deeper and more meaningful story. Zweig himself was in exile (self-imposed) because of the rise to power of Hitler. He and his wife experienced deep loneliness and isolation, and it is the theme he explores here. His character was in solitary confinement at Gestapo headquarters and to keep his mind occupied he turns to chess which soon becomes an obsession. Zweig delves into the mentality of a man living in that type of isolation. He exposes the pain, grief, depression, anger. He shows compassion and sensitivity. But even more, he shows his own mind. It is sad, and real, and the reader can really understand the emotions.
Our champion player on the other hand seems to represent the forces which caused the pain and isolation. (Hitler?) The chess game is a symbol of the battle between Hitler and Zweig himself. Hitler's rise to power forced Zweig into exile, and is therefore the cause of his despair.
But perhaps the most powerful part of the book was near the end when our amateur player quits the game without finishing it. He gives us. Withdraws. Puts himself in exile. This was incredibly powerful and as I wrote these words I realized that my original 3 stars was too low.
Finally in 2021, a book I can easily rate 5 stars.This is an outstanding story written by Zweig in 1941. In it we meet Mirko Czentovic, chess prodigy. Czentovic is a single minded person who excells only at chess. He is socially inept and some might even call him simple minded.
Then there are two chess wannabes who keep losing to Czentovic.
And then, a third talented chess player who the wannabes want to help them beat Czentovic.
Fascinating.
5 stars
Mod
Ah, what a masterful short novella. On a ship traveling from the US to Buenos Aires, our narrator, who has a certain fascination for oddities of human nature, introduces the reader to two chess players. We are told little about the narrator but learn a great deal about him from his highly nuanced perception of the other characters. He can see in the social interactions and behaviors of others a great deal, which tells us that the narrator is a very sensitive, educated individual with well developed social skills. This is important to the novella because the story is really only about two other people and we come to trust completely the narrator's insights into their behavior.The first part of the book centers on Mirko Czentovic, who is an uneducated, lower class Chess savant who plays only for money and has little to no imagination or social skills but nevertheless becomes world champion due purely to his ability to simply win, repeatedly, against every gentleman or sophisticate who believes that they may be good at the game.
Then in the second part of the book we meet Dr. B and the whole little story turns. Dr. B is a master chess player but he taught himself while in isolation and imprisonment by the Nazis. He has what he refers to as Chess poisoning.
Zweig captures the tension of the psychological battle between the two chess players, but more importantly, he builds a theme of how the torture of homelessness and isolation can remove a person from themselves. He also speaks to the concept of obsession and how one can not erase one's past emotions very easily. Our narrator is witness to not only the unraveling of a great mind but how "the lout" is able to take advantage of the sensitivity and nervousness of Dr. B.
Ultimately the story stands as a novella about human interactions on a small two person scale and on a global scale with fascism playing the part of the "lout".
As the narrator voices the whole story, this was an excellent audio book.
A powerful novella that was sent off for publication the day before the author's suicide. It tells the story of a man who meets a chess master aboard a transatlantic cruise. Zweig perfectly sets the stage for the story, expertly develops the characters, and builds a considerable amount of tension in this short book. He accomplishes in just a few pages what many can't pull off in much larger books. This is one of my favorites from the list, so far. Makes me want to play a game of chess.