![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() One of the passengers is the world famous chess master Mirko Czentovic, a young South Slavonian who is a bit of an idiot savant. The story is set on a steam ship that is travelling from New York to Buenos Aires. In a more superficial sense, the novella deals with obsessions that can lead to madness. It central theme seems to deal with how people cope mentally with psychologically demanding situations. Tragically, he and his wife committed suicide there in 1942.Ĭhess was published posthumously in 1942, and is an eighty-page novella. Fleeing the Nazis, he moved through several countries, ending up in Brazil. Stefan Zweig was an Austrian writer who was enormously popular in his day, specialising mostly in shorter fiction and novellas. While Chess is enjoyable enough, the overall result is not entirely satisfactory. It raises themes of terror and the fear induced by totalitarian government, yet mixes them with a lightweight plot. Stefan Zweig’s novella Chess is part caper and part psychological thriller, and suffers from a confusion of ideas and aims. ![]()
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