Sunday book pick: A shocking tale about the mad pursuit of freedom in Stefan Zweig’s ‘A Chess Story’

A large steamship is on its way from New York to Buenos Aires. Unbeknownst to most onboard, two chess aficionados are travelling with them. One is a young man, “an odd fish”, Mirko Czentovic who’s the world chess champion and another is a closet expert who’ll reveal himself in time.

Thus begins Austrian writer Stefan Zweig’s 1942 novella, A Chess Story. The Pushkin Press edition has been translated from the German by Alexander Starritt. Legendary translator Andrea Bell’s translation of the book was published by Penguin Random House as a clothbound classic. In addition to these two, various editions and translations exist of the story that has charmed and fascinated readers in its short 80 years of existence.

The first match

The nameless narrator, a passenger on the ship, is a friendly man who is desperate for some entertainment. Czentovic’s fame has already stoked his interest, even more so because outside of chess he’s something of a dimwit. The assessment of his intelligence is devastating – “his education in every field was uniformly nil.” A poor orphan who took up chess for the lack of anything better to do, he has emerged as a world champion at the age of 20. No education and an absence of street…

Read more