Chess Story: A Novella: Stefan Zweig
Chess Story, also known as The Royal Game, is the Austrian master Stefan Zweig's final achievement, completed in 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 the psychological.
Travelers by ship from New York to Buenos Aires find that on board with them is the world champion of chess, an arrogant and unfriendly man. They come 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.
This new translation of Chess Story brings out the work's unusual mixture of high suspense and poignant reflection.
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Community Reviews
A random guy imprisoned by Nazis learns to play chess. He is kept in a hotel room for months with nothing to do. He steal a chess book and starts getting obsessed with playing chess in his head with himself. He gets to a world champion level and we see him play a few games on the ship with out lead watching on.
It's frankly a bit pointless. I adore chess, but there is no plot here. Mere a flashback revealing a dull story. No end, no point, no growth. I guess it shows you a bit why AI is getting smart this fast and why AI learns new games extremely fast. It can learn chess from reading material alone. And it can replay games 1 billion times over to learn. We need this set in a sci-fi setting with a human android learning a new game in capture.
Frankly it's quite pointless yet I didn't actively dislike it.
It's frankly a bit pointless. I adore chess, but there is no plot here. Mere a flashback revealing a dull story. No end, no point, no growth. I guess it shows you a bit why AI is getting smart this fast and why AI learns new games extremely fast. It can learn chess from reading material alone. And it can replay games 1 billion times over to learn. We need this set in a sci-fi setting with a human android learning a new game in capture.
Frankly it's quite pointless yet I didn't actively dislike it.
this has been so difficult to rate and review since I was so conflicted about what my actual feeling about this book was. In short words, I liked this book but some minor (??) things bugged me a lot namely the practicality of Dr B's chess excellence and the demonstration of his skill in the match. The second thing would be skipping any exploration of Czentovic's character and the things that I really liked the exploration of the aftermath of torture in the theme of chess, the description of Dr B's gradual descent into monomania and ptsd books that have the depiction of war crimes and human suffering occupy a special place in my heart although it's not on my top tier, its certainly on a high place.
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