A Game of Chess and Other Stories

by Stefan Zweig, Peter James Bowman (Translator)

When it is discovered that the reigning world chess champion, Mirko Czentovic, is on board a cruiser heading for Buenos Aires, a fellow passenger challenges him to a game. Czentovic easily defeats him, but during the rematch a mysterious Austrian, Dr B., intervenes and, to the surprise of everyone, helps the underdog obtain a draw. When, the next day, Dr B. confides in a compatriot travelling on the same ship and decides to reveal the harrowing secret behind his formidable chess knowledge, a chilling tale of imprisonment and psychological torment unfolds.

Stefan Zweig’s last and most famous story, ‘A Game of Chess’ was written in exile in Brazil and explores its author’s anxieties about the situation in Europe following the rise of the Nazi regime. The tale is presented here in a brand-new translation, along with three of the master storyteller’s most acclaimed novellas: Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman, The Invisible Collection and Incident on Lake Geneva.

Genres: Short Stories, Fiction, Classics, Historical Fiction, German Literature, Chess, Collections

160 pages, Paperback

Published February 22, 2016

About the author

Stefan Zweig was one of the world's most famous writers during the 1920s and 1930s, especially in the U.S., South America, and Europe. He produced novels, plays, biographies, and journalist pieces. Among his most famous works are Beware of Pity, Letter from an Unknown Woman, and Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles. He and his second wife committed suicide in 1942.
Zweig studied in Austria, France, and Germany before settling in Salzburg in 1913. In 1934, driven into exile by the Nazis, he emigrated to England and then, in 1940, to Brazil by way of New York. Finding only growing loneliness and disillusionment in their new surroundings, he and his second wife committed suicide.
Zweig's interest in psychology and the teachings of Sigmund Freud led to his most characteristic work, the subtle portrayal of character. Zweig's essays include studies of Honoré de Balzac, Charles Dickens, and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Drei Meister, 1920; Three Masters) and of Friedrich Hölderlin, Heinrich von Kleist, and Friedrich Nietzsche (Der Kampf mit dem Dämon, 1925; Master Builders). He achieved popularity with Sternstunden der Menschheit (1928; The Tide of Fortune), five historical portraits in miniature. He wrote full-scale, intuitive rather than objective, biographies of the French statesman Joseph Fouché (1929), Mary Stuart (1935), and others. His stories include those in Verwirrung der Gefühle (1925; Conflicts). He also wrote a psychological novel, Ungeduld des Herzens (1938; Beware of Pity), and translated works of Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, and Emile Verhaeren.
Most recently, his works provided the inspiration for 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Reviews

[MihaElla · Rating 5 out of 5]

For me this read, first of Stefan Zweig, felt like a truly therapeutic literary treat, hence a book to be cherished and savoured. If I were a therapist of course I am not I would possibly recommend it to my patients on their first visit :) But why would I do that? I guess because as a therapist I won’t use anesthesia same way like I actually do it in my every day routine, though of course, again, not as a therapist, as we, as human beings, are already unconscious enough, and, as it happens, just a little bit of flickering consciousness sometimes we have. This reminds me of a nice joke :)

A man who had just undergone a very complicated operation kept complaining about a bump on his head and a terrible headache. Since his operation had been an intestinal one, there was no earthly reason why he should be complaining of a headache. Finally his nurse, fearing that the man might be suffering from some postoperative shock, spoke to the doctor about it. “Don’t worry about a thing, nurse” the doctor assured her. “He really does have a bump on his head. About halfway through the operation we ran out of anesthetic.”

The first thing that I felt after finishing this poignant collection of 4 stories The Invisible Collection, Incident on Lake Geneva, A Game of Chess, Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman's Life is that I would have lost out on some serious knowledge, insight, and inspiration, because this is the work of a rare alchemist who can mix grains of drama, tragedy and delight, without diminishing the savour of either. In truth, this book requires a lot of concentration but if one commits oneself to it, one will be a different human being :) As I said at the beginning, it is a genuine therapeutic masterpiece.

I found all 4 stories, regardless of their length, both extremely sophisticated and highly intelligent. And if I only ponder quietly and slowly, on the celebrated story that carries the collection title, I surely agree with the appreciation on the back cover ”Perhaps the best chess story every written, perhaps the best about any game.” (The Economist)

[Ed · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection contains four stories: two of them (Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman's Life; A Game of Chess) could be called novellas, while the others (The Invisible Collection; Incident on Lake Geneva) are only a few pages long. All of them are excellent. They are stories centred on guilt and despair, but are in no way mawkish or overwrought, but are rather built on a sort of driving energy and passion that makes them a pleasure to read.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 5 out of 5]

All my life I have been fascinated by every kind of monomaniac, by people with only one idea in their heads.
The more someone narrows his vision, the closer it will reach to infinity. Seemingly remote from the world, such people yet use their own special materials, like termites, to build a remarkable and thoroughly unique microcosm of that world.

Whoever selected these four stories included here knew what he (or she) was doing. They are linked thematically by this red thread of obsession, of people driven to extremes of passion or intellectual torment by a single idea.
Stefan Zweig wrote of course on a much larger canvas, as far as subjects and characters are concerned, but I am glad I have started my journey in his company here. As a showcase for his understated yet emotionally intense prose, for his quiet and clear-eyed focus on the lives of individuals as emblematic for the world they live in, these four stories could make an instant fan from any newcomer.
It’s what happened to me.

Personally I take more satisfaction in understanding people than in passing judgement on them.

The four stories have an almost classical structure, with the set-up presented by an outsider, a neutral observer/narrator whose interest or empathy are aroused by a person who single-mindedly pursues a particular passion. This narrator then places the fate of the individual within the context of a world gone astray, both lamenting the lost values of the previous generations and sounding alarm bells about the decay and destruction the present offers.
Tellingly, the last work published by Zweig before his suicide is called ‘The World of Yesterday’ – an autobiography chronicling the decadence of the Hapsburg empire [it’s pretty clear to me Zweig was a monarchist] and the effects of the first world war, of the rise of Fascism and of a mercurial society.
Each story here pits one of the scions of the Old World [an art collector, a delicate English lady, an anonymous Russian peasant, a Viennese solicitor] against one of the poster children of modern times [venal art dealers, compulsive gamblers, war leaders, Nazy torturers]. In each one, the values of the older generation are trampled underfoot by the reckless greed and the selfishness of the new one.

The Invisible Collection [1925]

The story is set in Germany in the aftermath of the Great War, a time of food shortages and rampant inflation. The narrator is the owner of an antique shop who sees his stock dwindle away, bought mainly by speculators and by the nouveau riches.
The man decides to visit one of his former clients who had consistently bought ancient prints and gravures, hoping to convince him to sell some of his precious collection.
Arriving in the small town where his client now lives, he discovers that the man has been blinded by a brain fever, the result of listening to news about the war. His memory is still sharp though, and he still speaks passionately about his best items to the dealer, lovingly touching the empty pages of his catalogues.

An invisible collection, long since scattered to the four winds – but for this blind man, this touchingly deluded man, it was still right in front of him, and his mind’s eye beheld it with a fervour so overwhelming that I almost came to believe in it myself.

His wife and sister have been forced to sell the old prints, one by one, to ruthless speculators who paid almost nothing in worthless paper currency to the desperate ladies, who still try to hide the loss from the blind man, whose sole reason for living is this collection of forgotten art.

... amidst the doom and gloom of the present age I had once again been permitted to experience directly an unsullied enthusiasm, a sort of spiritually illuminated ecstasy focused on art itself, a sentiment people today seem to have long forgotten. And I felt a kind of reverence – I can’t put it any other way – although I was still ashamed without quite knowing why.

Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman’s Life [1927]

Between two world wars, a group of gentlemen and ladies from all over Europe rests in a hotel on the French Riviera. The narrator and his table companions get into a virulent argument about morals and decency after they witness a family drama: the middle-aged wife of a French merchant elopes with a young man the day after she first meets him. What could drive a respectable matron to such scandalous abandonment of husband and children? What could happen in such a short interval to overhaul one’s life so completely.
The narrator’s refusal to condemn the actions of the runaway wife invites a private confession from the elderly, reticent English lady, illustrating such a violent upheaval that happened to her decades ago, on the same Cote d’Azur.

Perhaps only those who are strangers to passion know such sudden outbursts of emotion in their few passionate moments, moments of emotion like an avalanche or a hurricane; whole years fall from one’s own breast with the fury of powers left unused.

This longer novella format allows Zweig a greater liberty for psychological study, for his favorite pastime of observing people and abstaining from easy, ready-made condemnations.
The obsession underlining the proceedings is typical for the Riviera and takes place in an unnamed [but easily placed ] Monte Carlo casino. The restrained, self-contained English widow observes at the roulette table the febrile hands of a compulsive gambler. She witnesses his obvious mental fever and, afraid he will kill himself after he losses everything he has, she decides to follow him out into the night and try to help.

He was like a stone cast into a chasm, with nothing to arrest its fall until it reaches the very bottom. As a physical expression of exhaustion and despair I have never seen anything comparable.

The young man’s burning passion somehow uproots the whole mechanism the lady has devised to cope with her forced loneliness, and she gives herself over completely and selflessly to this effort of saving him from his own mania. But which is stronger? Love and integrity or the lure of the spinning ball of chance?

Without this terrible chance event I could never have imagined the burning, unbridled voracity of a man who has abandoned all hope and tries desperately to suck the last drop from life.

In less than twenty-four hours, this woman has had her whole life turned upside down, broken to pieces and hung out to dry. Was it worth it?

Incident on Lake Geneva [1927]

The shortest and the most heartbreaking story in the collection takes place during the Great War, but it could just as well be written today. It’s alternate original title is ‘The Refugee’ : a naked man is found by a fisherman one morning on an improvised raft in the middle of the lake. He is taken to the nearby village of Villeneuve, where nobody could understand a word he says, until a hotel owner happens to address him in broken Russian.
Apparently, he is a peasant who was recruited in the Tzar’s army and then send by train to the Western front without any explanation. Wounded and bewildered, the man deserts and decides to head back to his homeland, unaware of the distances involved and of the new regulations for border transits. His burning desire to go back to his family cannot be quenched by the goodwill of the locals, and the lack of a common language leads to tragedy.

A report on the incident was written, and as no one knew the stranger’s name, a cheap wooden cross was placed on his grave, one of those little crosses marking the fate of nameless men that cover our continent from end to end.

A Game of Chess [1942]

The main attraction here was written after Zweig himself was forced to flee his homeland by the threat of the Gestapo. It is a story about the game of kings, describing a chess match aboard an ocean liner heading from New York to South America, between the reigning world champion and a group of passengers.
Once again, a neutral observer will guide us through the study of men driven to extremes of mental stress by their passions or by their environment.

I had often experienced the mysterious allure of the “royal game”, the only game men have yet devised that holds itself serenely aloof from the tyranny of chance and whose laurels are won solely by the mind, or rather by a particular form of mental endowment.

The grandmaster Mirko Czentovic is a young prodigy whose meteoric rise through the ranks of chess players captures the interest of the narrator. In an effort to contact this brilliant but thoroughly unpleasant Czentovic, our psychological sleuth challenges another compulsive man to a game:

Mr McConnor belonged to the class of self-obsessed high achievers who experience a defeat even in the most trivial of contests as an affront to their personal standing. Accustomed to pushing his way heedlessly through life and spoilt by his undeniable success, this strapping self-made man had such an unshakeable belief in his own superiority that any opposition irked him as if it were a wilful obstruction, almost an affront.

The ensuing duel across the chequered board between arrogant personalities is mediated by the surprising intervention of another passenger, whose insightful advice helps the underdogs reach a draw against the world champion.
The new man becomes the focus of study now, and our narrator manages to extract a confession from him about his amazing ability to play a chess game entirely inside his head.

It’s a rather involved story, and can take its place in the narrative of the grand and delightful times we live in.

The ironically alluded to ‘times’ refer to the annexation of Austria by Hitler’s henchmen. The mysterious Mr. B, a solicitor for the Church and the monarchy, is a prime target for capture by the Gestapo, who are keen to find out his contacts and his accounts.
The description of the infernal mental torture he is submitted to, like the story of the doomed refugee earlier, is painfully relevant to our own timeline, where certain parties try to convince us that sensory deprivation and solitary confinement are justifiable methods of extracting information.

I lived like a diver in a glass bell in the black ocean of silence, a diver who guesses that the cable connecting him with the world above is severed and he will never be drawn back up from the soundless deep. There was nothing to do, nothing to hear, nothing to see, all around an unrelenting emptiness, devoid of time and space.

How we get from mental torture to chess problems as a means to preserving your sanity, and from there to destructive obsession, is better left to Mr. Zweig to argue.

Wanting to play chess against oneself is thus as much of a paradox as wanting to jump over one’s own shadow.

Playing progressed from enjoyment to desire and from desire to compulsion, a mania, a frenetic passion that ran through my waking hours and slowly invaded my sleep.

Suffice to say, I found his presentation subtle and convincing. His characters here [Czentovicz, Connors, Mr B.] are both memorable and easily identified among our peers even today. The way Zweig ties up his individual destinies with the fate of his contemporary world, his defence of decency and tolerance, his empathy and his clean, straight presentation justify in full for me the high praise I saw in my friends reviews here on Goodreads.
I plan to read more from him, time permitting.

[Ends of the Word · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alma Books are amongst my favourite “purveyors of literary classics”. Their “Alma Classics” imprint publishes paperbacks which are affordable and yet have an attractive layout and design. More importantly, the catalogue ventures beyond well-trodden paths to include lesser-known works (including several vintage supernatural titles) as well as great European and “world fiction”, often presented in new translations.

One recent publication, for instance, is this volume of four short stories by Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), an Austrian writer whose works are enjoying a comeback in the English-speaking world after decades of relative neglect. Zweig studied philosophy and was initially mainly known for his non-fiction. It was in the 1920s and 1930s that his career as a narrative writer really took off. At the height of his fame, he was respected as a major literary and cultural figure. Suffice it to say that composer Richard Strauss (whom he previously didn’t personally know) asked him to write the libretto for his opera "Die schweigsame Frau" and insisted that Zweig be credited at the premiere, despite Nazi pressure to remove any reference to the librettist (in view of his Jewish descent). This was in 1935, when Zweig had already left Austria for the UK to escape the rise of the Nazis. He would eventually kill himself in Brazil, where he spent his last years of in self-imposed exile.

These were turbulent years where the memories of a world war were still fresh and dark omens of a new conflagration were in the air. This is reflected in the four stories in this collection. Indeed, three of them specifically address political issues. The opening piece - The Invisible Collection - is subtitled "An Anecdote from the years of inflation in Germany"; Incident in Lake Geneva speaks of a war refugee washed ashore near a Swiss town; A Game of Chess, Zweig's last and, possibly, most famous work, describes the harrowing interrogation tactics of the Gestapo. The only exception is Twenty Four Hours in a Woman’s Life, a story about a woman’s one-night stand with a compulsive gambler. At first glance, Zweig seems more concerned with the psychology of his characters rather than grand political and philosophical themes – but these are always teeming close to the surface.

What is surprising is that these, by all accounts, tragic subjects, are presented in prose of an “old-world” elegance, masterfully conveyed in Peter James Bowman’s translation. Even the settings have a quasi-anachronistic, Mitteleuropean feel to them – a world of art collectors, expensive hotels and transatlantic ocean liners. Not surprisingly, Zweig had his fair share of detractors, who dismissed his works as frivolous and superficial. I beg to differ. As in the nostalgic, late works of Richard Strauss, the deceptively “saccharine” style masks a sense of protest in the face of a world which was changing beyond recognition. These stories are as much an elegy to lost innocence as Strauss’s "Metamorphosis" or "Four Last Songs".

[Fernando · Rating 5 out of 5]

First time reading Zweig and I can see why he's so hyped. He definitely knew how to engage the reader and keep things interesting.

Props to Peter James Bowman for the excellent translation.

[Smiley · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Game of Chess, the title story, is the last story in this volume; the others being The Invisible Collection, Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman's Life and Incident on Lake Geneva. Arguably regarded as a master of suspense, Stefan Zweig once again has not disappointed me due to his fantastic plot, dramatic setting, decisive climax, etc. in these fine and new translations by Peter James Bowman.

One of the reasons is that A Game of Chess was his last and most famous story written while in exile in Brazil. As we can see from reading its synopsis on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...) taken from the back cover, it amazingly reveals a heart-throbbing showdown of the battle of wits on a steamship heading for Buenos Aires between the reigning world chess champion, Mirko Czentovic, and Dr B., a mysterious Austrian solicitor. While reading this novella, I thought Mr Zweig wrote so well that I couldn't help wondering if he was a master chess player himself.


To continue . . .

[Tsung · Rating 4 out of 5]

“But are we not guilty of belittling chess by calling it a game at all? For surely it is also a science and an art, poised between these categories like Muhammad's coffin between heaven and earth, a unique fusion of all opposing pairs: ancient yet eternally new, mechanical in its arrangement yet requiring imagination in its effect, limited to a fixed geometric space yet limitless its permutations, forever evolving yet sterile, a thought process without purpose, a mathematics that solves nothing, an art with no art form, an architecture without materials, and nevertheless demonstrably more enduring in its essence and being than any book or artefact. It is the only game that belongs to all nations and all eras, and no one knows which divinity put it on into the world to stave off boredom, sharpen wits and firm up the spirit.”

Chess, the “King’s game”, has endured through many centuries and is unsurpassed in its position as the most cognitively challenging and character building game. Here it is the subject of Stefan Zweig’s novella, his final work before his suicide in Brazil, while in exile from his native Austria. Like the game, his story draws you in with its opening, it keeps you thinking in its middle game, but it ends in a draw or a stalemate, which might disappoint some readers. The same goes for the other novella and two short stories in this collection. But it feels like Zweig’s focus is on the psychology of a central character of each story. He seems less interested in providing closure to the character’s problem.

There are prominent themes common to each of the four stories.

Each character or story carries some secret. Secrets which remain embedded in their lives and have a lasting influence their choices and actions.

There is a recurring theme on how the inward character may be discerned from an outward expression. Zweig introduces us to the art of chiromancy and physiognomy in the novellas.

Zweig likes to use the “story within a story” device and it seems to work well here.

There seem to be veiled references to Zweig’s own experiences.

In “The invisible collection”, Hermann is not only physically blind, but he is blind to the realities of poverty and suffering which face his family. Yet he is enviably happy in his blissful ignorance. Or is he blessed in that he remembers all the fine details of his collection?

In “Twenty four hours in a woman’s life”, the elopement of an older married woman with a young man triggers off a cathartic reaction in an elderly woman Mrs C. Mrs C confesses a brief relationship with a young man in her past. But she is very conflicted about the nature of her relationship with him. Trying to fill the void of a deceased spouse and empty nest syndrome? Mothering instinct? Cougar instinct (rrrr!)? It certainly did not look like love but just an infatuation.

In “Incident on Lake Geneva”, the man’s death was an eerie foreshadowing of Zweig’s own suicide in response to his exile and uncertainty of return to his homeland.

In “A game of chess”, the characters travel from New York to Buenos Aires by ship, a journey which is similar to Zweig’s own. There are four chess players, but the main character is undoubtedly Dr.B. The irony was that although chess had become his weapon of defence from psychological torture, his means of challenging the system, it had also turned him into an obsessive wreck.

Overall, this book is a good read.

“Most people have little imagination, and what does not impinge on them directly, or run a sharp wedge insistently into a sensitive spot, generally fails to rouse them. On the other hand, something quite minor can put them in a towering passion if it happens right before their eyes or touches off their most immediate feelings.”

“The more my own sensations became blunted, the greater the urge I felt to go where the vortex of life was as its most furious; for those who experience nothing themselves the passionate agitation of others excites the nerves in the same way as drama or music.”

[Ray LaManna · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never read anything written by Zweig... He is an engrossing writer. These stories are beautifully written and extremely precise. They are just as relevant today as when they were written in the 1930s.

[Vishy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I first heard of Stefan Zweig through a comment made by Peter Hall in his book ‘Cities in Civilization‘, in which Hall talks about Vienna and its culture and architecture and mentions Stefan Zweig’s thoughts on Viennese culture at the beginning of the 20th century. I still can’t believe that I remember that, but happily I do. Later, I read one of Zweig’s short stories in an anthology. I then got his book ‘The World of Yesterday‘ and read the first fifty pages and loved it, but got distracted and kept it aside for a rainy day. I thought that I will get back to it one day and also read other Stefan Zweig books. I have still not got back to that book, but I discovered this story collection ‘A Game of Chess and other stories‘ and so I thought I will read this first.

‘A Game of Chess and other stories‘ has four stories – two of them are short stories and two of them are novellas. The first story ‘The Invisible Collection‘ is about an art dealer who goes to visit a longtime client. He has never met this client, but has been impressed by this client’s wisdom because he has collected little known pieces of art across the years which have gone on to become extremely valuable. Of course, when he actually meets that client, he ends up in an unusual situation. I can’t tell you more – you should read the story.

The second story is a novella called ‘Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman’s Life‘. In this story, a few people are holidaying in the Riviera. They don’t know each other originally, but get to know each other because they are staying in the same guesthouse. They have interesting cultural and intellectual conversations everyday and some of them even play tennis. At one point the wife of one person elopes with one of the guests. Most of the people are critical of the woman and call her irresponsible. But the narrator of the story takes her side and says that given the right circumstances, anyone can break the prevailing social rules and fall in love or get attracted to a stranger. This leads to a lot of heated debate. Then one of the older women takes aside the narrator, asks to speak with him privately and tells him the story of what happened one day in her life many years back. The forms the major part of the story.

The third story, ‘Incident on Lake Geneva‘ is about a stranger who ends up in the shores of Lake Geneva and the people of the town don’t know what to do with him as he speaks a strange language and it is war time. Who he is and what happens to him form the rest of the story.

The fourth story, a novella, is the title story ‘A Game of Chess‘. A ship is leaving New York for Buenos Aires. It has the World Chess Champion Mirko Czentovic in it. Our narrator wants to engage the champion Czentovic in some way. But Czentovic avoids people. The narrator tries to catch his attention by engaging in a game of chess with a fellow traveller. The trick works. Czentovic agrees to join them next day for a game or two. And he easily defeats them. But the story doesn’t end there. One of the spectators joins the amateur players against Czentovic. He is able to see the World Champion’s tactics and strategy many moves in advance and gives the right kind of advice. Before long, the amateurs are able to hold their own against the World Champion. Czentovic is impressed and calls for a game next day with this mysterious traveller. Meanwhile our narrator goes to meet this mysterious traveller and this mysterious chess genius tells the story of how he got so good at the game.

I loved all the stories in the book, but I loved the novellas a little bit more. I can’t decide which is my favourite story, because I liked both ‘A Game of Chess‘ and ‘Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman’s Life’ equally well. All the stories had beautiful passages that I liked very much. Most of them had an interesting structure – a narrator starts to tell us the story and this narrator meets another person who takes over and tells us the rest of the story, the important part of the story. This is how stories used to be written once upon a time, in which the original narrator doesn’t play an important part in the story. It made me smile. There is a description of the Riviera in ‘Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman’s Life‘ which is incredibly beautiful which I loved. ‘A Game of Chess‘ has been called the best chess story ever written. I don’t know about that, but it definitely had one of the most beautiful passages on chess that I have ever read.

Here are some of my favourite passages from the book.

From ‘Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman’s Life’

Most people have little imagination, and what does not impinge on them directly, or run a sharp wedge insistently into a sensitive spot, generally fails to arouse them. On the other hand, something quite minor can put them in a towering passion if it happens right before their eyes or touches off their most immediate feelings. So, in a sense, the rarity of their emotional involvement is offset by the unwarranted and excessive vehemence they show in such instances.

You know the Riviera landscape. It’s always fine, but it offers its rich hues complacently and with picture-postcard flatness to the eye, rather like a sleepy, languid beauty who is content to be touched by every gaze, almost oriental in her ever-luxuriant display. But sometimes, very seldom, there are days when this beauty rises up with a purpose and cries out for attention, sparkling with madly garish colours and flinging her myriad blooms triumphantly in one’s face, her sensuality burning bright. And just such an effervescent day had dawned after the stormy chaos of the night. The rain-washed street gleamed white, the sky was turquoise and on all sides lush bushes catching the light flamed like green torches. The mountains seemed nearer and more distinct in the crisp, sunny sky, pressing forward inquisitively on the glittering, brightly polished town.

From ‘A Game of Chess‘

But are we not guilty of belittling chess by calling it a game at all? For surely it is also a science and an art, poised between these categories like Muhammad’s coffin between heaven and earth, a unique fusion of all opposing pairs : ancient yet eternally new, mechanical in its arrangement yet requiring imagination for its effect, limited to a fixed geometrical space yet limitless in its permutations, forever evolving yet sterile, a thought process without purpose, a mathematics that solves nothing, an art form with no artworks, an architecture without materials, and nevertheless demonstrably more enduring in its essence and being than any book or artefact. It is the only game that belongs to all nations and all eras, and no one knows which divinity brought it into the world to stave off boredom, sharpen wits and firm up the spirit. Where is its beginning and where its end? Any child can learn its basic rules, any bungler can try his hand at it, and yet from within its small, unvarying square field it brings forth an extraordinary and incomparable species of virtuoso, people whose peculiar gifts make chess their only possible vocation. In this type of genius, vision, patience and technique operate in the same proportions as with mathematicians, poets and composers – only these elements are differently layered and combined.

I don’t think I have done justice to this beautiful book in my review. ‘A Game of Chess and other stories‘ is one of my favourite books of the year. I will definitely be reading it again. I can’t wait to read more Stefan Zweig.

[Alba · Rating 5 out of 5]

To rank all four stories in this collection:

1. A Game of Chess
“A Game of Chess” felt almost like playing an actual chess game, with the reader as an amateur and the author as a grandmaster. You start with the confidence of an amateur, thinking that maybe luck will be on your side, even though chess is not about luck, it’s about strategy. You make the first moves, feeling confident in your own strategy, thinking you can dominate the board. Then, the grandmaster Stefan Zweig shows why he’s a grandmaster, delivering breathtaking moves that hit like a punch in the gut. Moves you never saw coming, moves that leave you wondering, ‘Where did that even come from?’ Sometimes, it even felt like Zweig was deliberately moving the pieces just to frustrate the opponent, like those grandmasters who toy with their challengers. It was an intensely gripping experience, like an actual chess match. And in the end, as the amateur player, you’re left bewildered and in awe of the grandmaster’s brilliance, Stefan Zweig.

2. 24 Hours in a Woman’s Life
“24 Hours in a Woman’s Life” remains just as captivating on this re-read. Stefan Zweig never fails to evoke a whirlwind of emotions.

3. The Invisible Collection
“The Invisible Collection” is both touching and bittersweet. It left me with a sad smile, a bit amused by the old man’s precious innocence and his quiet tragedy.

4. Incident on Lake Geneva
“Incident on Lake Geneva” didn’t leave a strong impression on me. I felt a bit distanced from the story, but I’ll definitely come back to it after some time.

[Realini Ionescu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Chess or The Royal Game by Stefan Zweig is ranked 857th on The Greatest Books of All Time site, but in my Top 200, along with Twenty- Four Hours in The Life of A Woman, my take on it is on the blog, where the best review is https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20...

10 out of 10

‘Isn’t it appallingly easy to think yourself a great man when you’re not burdened by the faintest notion that men like Rembrandt, Beethoven, Dante or Napoleon ever lived?’ this is just one of the insightful, thought provoking statements or questions you find in this Royal (indeed) Game story, and this is another one: ‘the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity’, to have the conclusion right here:

- This is an extraordinary, short, captivating narrative

Twenty-four Hours in The Life of A Woman https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... is just as fabulous, although they have different settings and types of characters – one of the main ones in Schachnovelle is Mirko Czentovic, the world chess champion that is on board this ship…
That is to leave New York for Buenos Aires in the beginning of the story, one that will become familiar for readers, if not quite loveable, on the contrary, he is not exactly the ‘villain’, but let us just say we do not want him to win, at least I did not, in spite of his past, of which we learn soon, this novella is only around one hundred pages long

I am not sure if he was Slovenian or Slavonian – whatever the latter might mean, it is what we have in the text – if the former, then he would share origins with that loathsome figure, wife of Orange Jesus, a person I dislike (euphemism) and not just by her association with the worst leader of the free world, but on her own ‘merits’
Czentovic has had almost no education, and we can see this in his misbehavior lack of panache and all, but he is to be admired for his special talent, he explodes on the scene of chess out of nowhere, he just sees the game, first wins against a modest amateur, then wins a local competition and soon gets to be world champion

He plays for money and that will be the incentive used on board the ship – ‘the mysterious attraction of the ‘royal game’, the only game ever devised by mankind that rises magnificently above the tyranny of chance, awarding the palm of victory solely to the mind, or rather to a certain kind of mental gift’ plays its tricks here
McConnor is one of the passengers on the ship, impetuous and determined to have a game of chess with the world champion, having those interested join to try and oppose the much better player, and for the right sum, Mirko Czentovic is willing to participate, and evidently, he wins, but not in the following stages, when we have a surprise

There are people watching, even from the crew, waiters, and one man intervenes at one point, when a wrong move is about to be made on the chess board, and eventually, he is the one who will obtain a draw – by now, a spoiler alert might be needed, or it is just too late, I am carried away usually, and not sure anyone is reading
So far in the note anyway – when they see the result of the intervention of this stranger, the community of those playing against the champion are thrilled and they clearly want to see if there is more, maybe even a victory and McConnor insists on having another match, only the savior refuses saying he is not going to play again

Nevertheless, the players talk to the narrator, and seeing that they are both Austrians, the good player and the narrator, he will approach this man, we will know him as Dr. B, and thus we all find about his traumatizing past – he has worked in this firm, representing important clients, members of the imperial family
Then the second world war started, the Nazis took over Austria – I think it was called Anschluss – and then Dr. B. and many others would suffer the consequences, they had had very discreet dealings with monasteries, the aristocrats, handling money, transfers, secret documents, but they had a traitor in their midst

This fellow would talk to the Gestapo, they arrested Dr. B. and his trauma would start, they would not send him to the death camps, because they wanted to extract information, names from him, which would lead to great sums of money, so they used a terrible method, the one of isolation, complete and heinous
Studies have shown that isolation is deadlier, twice as much, than smoking, and in the case of our chap, it had horrendous consequences, the isolated captive felt he would lose his mind, until he finds a book in the pocket of a coat, which he steals and is disappointed with, because it was with 150 games of chess, played between champions

However, it proved to be his redemption, or downfall, it is like in that Zen Master story – the one in which he keeps saying we shall see, which is on my blog, links are above and below, if you just dropped here, because the prisoner starts learning those by heart and can fill his empty hours with this activity, until it is too much
Dr. B becomes obsessed from the point where he is bored with the 150 and then starts playing against himself, he ends up in a hospital, in danger of being destroyed by what they may now call Obsessive Compulsive Behavior…he does accept to play one more time against the champion, and…he wins, but ‘We shall see’ is the conclusion, since the winner becomes again agitated, overcome by that old feverish, intense compulsion

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

[Abhinav · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful collection of short stories that provide fascinating insight into the workings of the mind under the spell of irrationality & mania.

Strongly recommended.

[Joana Matos · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterpiece!

[Bluebell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I honestly don't understand why more people have not heard of Stefan Zweig, he is such an incredible writer and so understated.
As someone who has no idea how to play chess or any interest in chess, it is a mark of Zweig's genius that he could craft an entire story around chess that is capable of moving the reader to tears.
Having only read Beware of Pity, another phenomenal work of his, I was really keen to read this collection of four stories and I was not let down one bit, they are some of the most powerful stories I have read and it seems like literally anything Zweig wrote could not fail to be engaging, thought provoking and moving.

Zweig has such insight into humanity and life in general, with acute and sensitive perceptions. His stories are so rich with meaning. Although he writes from a philosophical/psychological standpoint, all of his stories are engaging to read, accessible and very easy to follow with carefully and imaginatively crafted characters and settings.
I recommend this collection highly, it contains four stories "The Invisible Collection" ( a story about art), "24 hours in the life of a woman", (poignant recollection of a woman's experience) "Incident on Lake Geneva" (about the plight of a refugee) and "Chess Story". If you've never read Zweig before or equally are looking for a new read you would really enjoy these.

[George · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. A very well written, mesmerising, interesting,thought provoking, memorable four short stories collection. My favourite being ‘A Game of Chess’.
In ‘A Game 0f Chess’, two unusual opponents play against one another. The background story of each opponent is interesting and unique.

Zweig’s stories focus on issues such as the true art collector, the swindler, gambling addiction, the affect of war on individuals, spontaneous out-of-character behaviour, and what the preoccupation on one activity like chess can have on an individual’s behaviour.

Here is an example of the author’s writing style:

‘The more one limits oneself, the closer one is to the infinite; these people, as unworldly as they seem, burrow like termites into their own particular material to construct, in miniature, a strange and utterly individual image of the world.’

Short story writing at it’s best, highly recommended.

[Christina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thoroughly enjoyable book. Couldn’t fault it. A Game of Chess might be on my favourite short stories of all time.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection contains two novellas and two short stories, written in the 1920s and 1930s. These are

The Invisible Collection A sad tale of the experiences of an art collector trying to do business in Germany during the period of hyper inflation. Probably my favourite of the collection.

Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman's Life An elderly English lady tells the story of how an unexpected encounter in Monte Carlo changed her life.

Incident on Lake Geneva A stranger is rescued on the Lake, but soon finds his situation is not what he was hoping for.

A Game of Chess Probably Zweig's most famous story, set on a ship bound for Argentina. The world chess champion plays a mysterious passenger, Dr B, and a tale of psychological torture is revealed.

Zweig's style is precise and careful, and is capable of creating descriptions of great beauty. His depiction of landscapes, such as Monte Carlo on a sunny morning, are vivid and colourful and reflect the feelings of his characters. Zweig is also a master at describing convincingly the effects of obsession and mental torment.

However, his technique of having characters tell their stories to a narrator means that the overall effect is quite flat, and not as moving as it should be. There is inevitably more 'tell' than 'show', and this hinders engagement with the narrative. I felt I appreciated the stories intellectually, but not emotionally, even though the subjects are undoubtedly tragic and poignant.

[R1CEC4KE · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Invisible Collection - 5

Absolutely loved this one. A perfect blend of ghost-story format and the Uncanny that twists the genre on its head by changing who (or rather, what) the ghost is. Wonderfully short and digestible too.

24 Hours In A Woman's Life - 3

Enjoyed a lot of this story, especially how vivid it's descriptions were; the face is a medium, a mask, a recepticle; the hands gesture and flail much as a mouth does. That being said, the most lengthy short story in this collection, it proved a bit too stretched for my taste. It does a good job of keeping together a sense of suspense but unfortunately doesn't pay back in full for it.

Incident on Lake Geneva - 3.5ish

Very abrupt start and end, and left me wanting a little more exposition. But then again, the lack of exposition might be the point, the rapid arrival and dissappearance of the Russian man simply being a short moment, a temporary enigma or uncanny cryptid that will never be solved.

A Game of Chess - 4.5-5

The star of the show/collection, this story proved to be as excellent as promised. Zweig's skillful narrative shifts between spoken hearsay and first-hand observations and his continued concern with the psychological invokes the politics of memory that characterised Jewish life in and after the Nazi regime and the holocaust. It manages this with care and nuance, I find.

[Pernilla Lindholm · Rating 4 out of 5]

Austria - read around the world.

So, I finally got around to read the next book in my read around the world challenge.

Short stories aren’t usually my thing. However, there is something I really like about the stories in this collection. There are four short stories in the book, and I especially like the first and the last one. The first one (The Invisible Collection) is about an old man with a passion for art. He has collected paintings for many years, and can talk about the different pieces in his collection even though he’s lost his sight and cannot see them anymore. What he doesn’t know is that his family has been forced to sell off his work due to the family’s financial crisis. Left behind are empty canvases… The last story, A Game of Chess, is also very good and is about a man who once meets the chess world champion and, incredulously, gets to play him with the help of two new acquaintances. An interesting story unfolds…

The two weaker stories are still very good, but they are the reason this short story collection doesn’t get five stars from me.

Off to my last novel from an A country - Azerbaijan!

[Suli Scatchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

oh go on then… it gets a 5/5

i get the zweig hype! really good curation of stories around obsession and mania. they’re punchy, focused and yet contain such rich characters. keen to read more!

[ynna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uh, wow. 4.5

[Robyn Roscoe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I think I first heard about the Chess story in a Slack channel discussion about leadership - I think someone mentioned it as a favourite book, but I can no longer find the message. In any event, I sought the book out as I was hoping for something good to fit the "translation" category for this year's book list. I was most delighted that I did.

The book includes four stories - two short stories and two novellas, all involving travel of some kind. There is a common conceit employed: the main narrative involves characters telling the story to another person, and so almost all of the action of the story is a kind of flashback. I didn't really notice this at first, as the stories are so interesting and compelling; by the fourth story the mechanism was obvious but not at all off-putting as it is handled brilliantly by the author. Zwieg provides a current context and a set of characters that make the telling of the story meaningful and essential. Whether the art of Zwieg or of the translator or both, the language is excellent.

While all of the stories are excellent, the first two are exceptional. "The Invisible Collection" is a surprising and heart-breaking short story about an art dealer whose scheming avarice is corrected to compassion through a shared love of art and beauty. "Twenty-Four Hours in the Life of a Woman" is an extremely well-told story about an elderly woman's opportunity to unburden herself of a story from her middle-age. This novella was a page-turner, and an exceptionally perceptive story about experiences that most women (and likely many men) could relate to: incidents that combine strength, compassion, shame, and loss that become secret parts of complex backstories that make each person who they are. This story was also decidedly modern, as other than technological advances (ex. horse-and-carriage to motorcar) it could easily have taken place any time prior to ~2010.

The other stories are also quite good. "Incident on Lake Geneva" is sad and perhaps heavy-handed as an obvious commentary on war and the mistreatment of people, but still moving. "A Game of Chess" is also good (although requires at least a rudimentary knowledge of the game to understand the story) with a similarly obvious commentary on the abuses of war and conquerors, in this case Nazi Germany specifically.

As with all excellent short stories, Zweig manages to create whole characters and almost tangible atmospheres very quickly and effectively, while still maintaining some elements of surprise and reveal. Even when you can sense the inexorable path of the story, you still want to read on and be a part of the characters' revelation, despair, or redemption.

I found this book remarkable - I did not expect to enjoy it as much as I did, or to be able to finish it in one day (it is only 150 pages, but still). Zweig is now on my list of authors to be sought out for further future reading.

[Ness · Rating 5 out of 5]

have been wanting to read Chess since I read intermezzo last year and I’m very glad it was not a disappointment (unlike my ability to play chess, which remains stunted due my refusal to learn any openings)

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a short collection of stories by Stefan Zweig. There are only four of them collected here. I’ll describe each one in turn.

'The Invisible Collection' describes a visit to the home of an old blind man by an antiques dealer. The dealer arrives expecting to get a look at a set of valuable prints at the home of an old customer. But when he arrives, he finds himself complicit in a sort of ruse with the blind man’s family. The prints have been sold long ago. The pages in the folios still so lovingly turned by the owner’s hands are blank. The story has the subtitle ‘An Anecdote from the Years of Inflation in Germany’ — on that level, the metaphor is perhaps a little too direct. Like money, those pages have a value which essentially depends on a sort of collective delusion as to their worth. The story has that heightened quality of anguish that is common to Zweig’s work. It is essentially an overwritten, over-dramatised rendition of a poetic image; but the image is haunting regardless.

'Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman’s Life' is a little more developed. It is tempting to call it cinematic, given that it is so driven with the power of a direct, silent image — in this case a figure glimpsed repeatedly from across a street, or across a room. That said, as with all the stories in this collection it uses a frame narrative. After a minor scandal in a country hotel, an older woman recounts to the narrator an event from years ago. She tried to help a man, a gambler, who had lost a huge amount of money; she ended up falling for him; he ran away; she couldn’t stop him gambling. As a conventional story it is perhaps the most complete thing here. It is also madly overwrought. Zweig was popular in his lifetime but he was not always well-liked, and in this story it’s easy to see why. Every emotion is heightened to breaking point.

'Incident on Lake Geneva' is comparatively slight, and highly restrained. It is not much more than ten pages long. In the year 1918, a naked man is found by a fisherman, clinging to a set of broken spars; when he is brought ashore, only the ex-manager of the local hotel can speak to him in his native Russian. He is a nameless conscripted soldier who somehow became separated from his regiment, and is entirely lost. It is unclear how exactly he came to be on Lake Geneva — it seems he picked west when he should have wandered east. At any rate he is stranded in neutral Switzerland — he cannot leave without traversing other non-neutral countries. He is distraught and, in the end, he drowns himself in the lake. The story is a bleak, minimal thing. It concludes on a stark image: ‘…a cheap wooden cross was placed on his grave, one of those little crosses marking the fate of nameless men that cover our continent from end to end.’

'A Game of Chess' is perhaps one of Zweig’s most famous stories. (Oddly, it has had various titles in English under various translators: ‘The Royal Game’, ’A Chess Story’, ‘Chess: a Novel’ or sometimes simply ‘Chess’.) The narrator is on a ship bound for Buenos Aires when he discovers that a famous chess grandmaster named Czentovic is on board. Czentovic’s story is well-known: he was the uneducated son of a poor peasant when his matchless talent for the game became apparent. The narrator is fascinated by this imposing, uncouth figure, and in an effort to draw him into a game he falls in with an arrogant passenger wealthy enough to put up enough cash to draw Czentovic’s attention. The two of them challenge him as a team, and they are almost beaten when they draw the attention of a third — a nervous stranger named Dr B who has his own uncanny gift for the game. He claims not to have played for twenty-five years, and his advice seems to come from a place of desperation, but he seems like the only one capable of defeating Czentovic. Soon enough he tells his own story.

Dr B was resident in Austria when the Nazis annexed that country. He was taken prisoner by the Gestapo, who believed he was keeping information from them regarding the old Austrian monarchy; being an otherwise respectable middle-class citizen, he was kept under arrest in the relative comfort of a hotel room. But with nobody to talk to and nothing to read or watch or do, his solitary confinement became tortuous. It is a haunting picture of isolation:

‘I lived like a diver in a glass bell in the black ocean of silence, a diver who guesses that the cable connecting him with the world above is severed and he will never be drawn back up from the soundless deep.’

The most affecting image here is not the darkness or the silence — if those can be called images — but the glass bell. The thing which, in spite of everything around it, keeps us aware that there is some distinction between the self and the void. It is from the awareness of this distinction that the pain arrives.

One day Dr B finds solace. He steals a book from the coat pocket of an officer which turns out to be a book of chess problems. At first he is disappointed, not having any pieces or a board, but eventually he becomes fully proficient in playing the game entirely in his head. For a while he becomes happy and mentally stronger — but he cannot rid himself of his unspoken obsession with chess. The 150 problems in the book soon become exhausted, and to maintain his interest he is forced to play against himself.

‘If black and white are one and the same person, a preposterous situation is produced in which a single mind is supposed both to know something and not to know it, so that its white self should, by self-command, forget all the aims and intentions of its black self a minute earlier. The premise for such dual thinking is a totally split consciousness, with the brain’s functions being switched on and off like a mechanical apparatus. Wanting to play chess against oneself is thus as much of a paradox as wanting to jump over one’s own shadow.’

Dr B describes the effect as akin to a split personality. But it is not simply a duality — to compute every one of the many alternative moves effectively requires a multiplication into countless simultaneous selves. The strain becomes too much. After a violent attack on a guard, he ends up in a hospital. Eventually, with some help from a benevolent doctor, he is released. He leaves Austria and tries to forget about chess entirely.

A Game of Chess was the last story Zweig ever wrote. He and his wife had been living in exile in South America during the second world war; a day after posting the manuscript to his publishers, they committed suicide. It is hard to avoid thinking about this while reading this story. At first it seems much like most of his other stories — the format is the same, with the heart of the matter being framed as an encounter with a stranger in some marginal travelling space. But where the drama should be is only a terrible void. There are no questions of shame or moral or ethical responsibility; there is only a man kept in a room forever, slowly losing his mind.

The coda of the story is, as you might expect, a match between Dr B and Czentovic. The latter finds a weakness in B’s otherwise impregnable approach — B must play quickly. He works to the speed of his own brain, and so any kind of forced delay in between moves becomes intolerable. And so Czentovic begins to take longer and longer to move until B begins to become confused. Errors are forced from his opponent. He loses. And in this, we glimpse something uniquely cruel. It is not so much that Czentovic behaved in an underhand way because he couldn’t find a way to win on his own terms — that much might be expected from any cunning sportsman. The cruelty comes from the spectacle of a man finding another man’s weak point and pressing down on it with all his strength. It is a uniquely horrific sort of exploitation. But this is what competition does to us. Perhaps society relies on men like Czentovic in order to go on functioning.

The chess games that went on in Dr B’s head were sustained by the idea of constant, total multiplicity: given that both sides were always ultimately B’s side, there could be no real process of elimination — no winners and losers. There could only be an endless selection of moves, categorised as ideal, optimal or otherwise. The confusion would become total, but he could never really defeat himself when the only opponent was his own expectations. But every game of chess that happens in the world outside B’s head must result in the ultimate submission of an individual. Czentovic understands this, and places B in a situation which he cannot survive. It is not sufficient to calculate the perfect move from every given variation when you suddenly find you have forgotten the rules.

[MJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

5*

The thing with short stories is, if it grips me, I don't want it to end. That is how I felt about two of the stories here, Twenty Four Hours in a woman's Life and A Game of Chess. I wished they were full length novels!

Zweig has become my favorite short story writer because of how engrossed I become with his storytelling. The more immersed I get, the more I'm unable to abandon them. Also, the elegance with which he tells his tales...he has a way of making events of his time appear relevant now as they were then (1930s). Timelessness isn't something every writer achieves effortlessly.

This is my second German literature in a row which I got lost in completely. I noticed that German literature are squarely centered around those turbulent years of war (WW1 and WW2). Writers who lived through them often still retain fresh memories of the events and turmoil they witnessed, retelling them through their writings. All four stories here reflect just that exactly.

Also, Peter James Bowman masterfully translated Zweig's writings. There is always an element of a "story inside the story" that is essentially Zweig's writing style (I read Zweig's only novel Beware of Pity earlier this year). Just when I think I have read everything there is out there about life during the world wars, Zweig tends to slip it in to let me know still just how unaware I am about those tragic times.

Excellent read!

[Ruacks de l'aixopluc · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes it happens that everybody around you seems to be reading the same author. This happened to me with Stefan Zweig. The Austrian writer everybody seems to be fond of. It is well known that Zweig had a great interest in psychology; a feature we can tell from his deep and emotional approach when it comes to presenting characters’ feelings. I usually avoid mainstream authors but after reading so many positive reviews about his work, I thought I’d give him a chance and he did not disappoint at all. There is something in his way of writing that feels like therapy and at the same time, makes me want to befriend him. The short stories I’ve read of him so far (The Invisible Collection, 24 Hours in a Woman’s Life, Incident on Lake Geneva and A Game of Chess) are about uncommon topics which would usually come out as boring or unappealing if one thinks about it. However, Zweig turns them spellbinding. Never had I thought I would enjoy so much reading about a chess match.

[Reuben Wood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably one of the best short story collections I've read. The writing was very clear and gripping, the stories unique and quotable.
The title story was a little odd but very engrossing and certainly entertaining as someone currently in the middle of a chess addiction myself.

[Amitava Das · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fabulous collection of stories. Zweig is as good a classic storyteller as Doyle or Dahl, forgive the unintentional alliteration. The title story is one of the very best I’ve read.

[Jeroen Van de Crommenacker · Rating 5 out of 5]

These stories are just a joy to read. Nothing overly complicated or contrived, just nice, well written stories. I especially liked “A Game of Chess”!

[SillySuzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Invisible Collection
Beautiful and moving story about an old, blind man, whose valuable collection of old prints (Dürer, Rembrandt) is sold from under him by his wife and daughter without him suspecting a thing in times of hyperinflation.
Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman's Life
How a 42-year-old lady who has just lost her husband, tries to save a 24-year-old young man from his gambling addiction and fails miserably. The experience stays with her for the rest of her life.
Incident on Lake Geneva
In the summer of 1918, a Russian soldier shows up at Lake Geneva thinking that Russia is on the other shore. Nobody understand him or knows what to do with him, so he takes desperate measures.
A Game of Chess
When the world champion of chess, Mirko Czentovic, boards a large steamship bound for Buenos Aires, he is challenged to a game of chess by a mysterious chess player named Dr B. Gradually we get to know more about this Dr B. who taught himself to play chess while imprisoned by replaying famous chess matches from a book and eventually playing against himself.

Everyone read this novel for his/her German reading list in highschool (Die Schachnovelle) as it was such a thin book. I was no exception. It was even better than I remembered, but maybe this was because I read it in English this time ☺. Superb writing style, great plot. The first three stories were new to me, but they were wonderful as well.