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THE CLASSIC INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER
A new edition of this classic Zweig story - an epic chess match on a translatlantic liner during WW2 unearths a story of persecution and obsession
On the deck of a transatlantic ocean liner, a crowd of passengers gathers to watch reigning chess world champion Mirko Czentovic take on a series of amateur challengers. The haughty grandmaster dispatches all of his opponents with ease, until one Dr B steps forward from the crowd - a passionate lover of the royal game who still bears the mental scars of imprisonment by the Nazis in his native Austria. The enigmatic genius reluctantly agrees to challenge Czentovic, but at what cost to his sanity?
Written during the Second World War, The Royal Game was the great Stefan Zweig's final work - a searing, suspenseful tale of psychological torment and the price of obsession.
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig (1881-1942), novelist, biographer, poet, and translator, was born in Vienna into a wealthy Austrian Jewish family. During the 1930s, he was one of the bestselling writers in Europe, and was among the most translated German-language writers before the Second World War. With the rise of Nazism, he moved from Salzburg to London (taking British citizenship), to New York, and finally to Brazil, where he committed suicide with his wife. New York Review Books has published Zweig's novels The Post-Office Girl and Beware of Pity as well as the novella Chess Story.
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