Chess
A Novel
Published on 17. April 2025
Book
Paperback/Softback
96 pages
978-0-241-74729-2 (ISBN)
Description
90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books
My delight in playing turned to a lust for playing, my lust for playing into a compulsion to play, a mania, a frenetic fury that filled not only my waking hours but also came to invade my sleep. I could think of nothing but chess, I thought only in chess moves and chess problems . . .
As a chess obsessive, what if you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play the world champion, but it might send you to the edge of madness . . . and tip you over?
My delight in playing turned to a lust for playing, my lust for playing into a compulsion to play, a mania, a frenetic fury that filled not only my waking hours but also came to invade my sleep. I could think of nothing but chess, I thought only in chess moves and chess problems . . .
As a chess obsessive, what if you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play the world champion, but it might send you to the edge of madness . . . and tip you over?
Reviews / Votes
A brilliant writer-New York TimesOne 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
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 176 mm
Width: 106 mm
Thickness: 7 mm
Weight
64 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-74729-2 (9780241747292)
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Schweitzer Classification
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Persons
Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna to a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. Recognition as a writer came early for Zweig; by the age of forty, he had already won literary fame. In 1934, with Nazism entrenched, Zweig left Austria for England, and became a British citizen in 1940. In 1941 he and his second wife went to Brazil, where they committed suicide. Zweig's best-known works of fiction are Beware of Pity (1939) and Chess (1942), but his most outstanding accomplishments were his many biographies, which were based on psychological interpretation.