Chess - Stefan Zweig (1942) AKA Chess Story, AKA The Royal Game

Rating: Excellent

I found my copy of Chess in my local street library, a well-loved source of great finds in the neighbourhood. The book’s eye-catching cover stood out, despite its slender 104 page-count. Stefan Zweig was a name I vaguely recognised, but I didn’t realise that the Austrian writer was one of the most popular writers in the world during the 1920’s, through the 1930s. Zweig’s story is unfortunately typical of Jewish born artists and intellectuals in central Europe during the time of the rise of Nazism in Germany. Zweig emigrated to England in the mid-1930s to escape Nazism, eventually settling in Brazil, where he was initially happy. Unfortunately he and his wife became so depressed by the state of war-torn Europe and humanity that they committed suicide by barbiturate overdose in 1942. Chess was the last work Zweig submitted for publication, emerging just before his death. An anonymous narrator recalls his experience aboard a passenger liner travelling from the USA to Buenos Aires, where he recognises world chess champion Mirko Czentovic. The narrator first establishes Czentovic’s background, his emergence from obscurity to being a world-renowned chess genius – an idiot savant basically. The narrator very much wishes to play Czentovic and engineers a situation, the playing of a chess game in the bar on the liner, in which to attract his attention. This ploy works, but it also attracts the attention of one Dr B., who, before long, takes up the challenge of playing the champion, with alarming results.

Stefan Zweig, contemplating the future

It is the background story of Dr B., who recounts his past experiences to the narrator during the middle section of the narrative, that is the crux of this short but affecting novella. Dr B., when living and working in Austria, is arrested by the Gestapo in order to find the whereabouts of Church assets he had helped to hide. Dr B is imprisoned in isolation for many months, with his only respite coming from the stolen contents of an instructional book on chess, which also outlines a number of famous games. Dr B., in attempting to survive captivity, plays games of chess in his mind, becoming highly skilled in the process. Such a premise allows Zweig to explore the insidious reach of Nazism, which caused untold physical damage to the world, but also emotional and psychological damage as well. The suicide of Zweig and his wife, Lotte Altmann, indicates that they very much felt the terrible psychological effects of having been driven from their home country, only to helplessly watch as Nazi Germany threatened the world with their tyranny. Dr B., who is physically safe from the Gestapo, still suffers from psychological trauma, something that emerges during his games with Czentovic. It’s a clever device; one made all the more affecting by Zweig’s precise style and the exacting brevity of the novella. Easily read in one sitting, Chess remains in your mind long after, making it a powerful artistic statement from a dark era in modern history.