Chess
  • Published: 18 September 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241305164
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $17.99
Categories:

Chess

A Novel

Formats & editions
Paperback
15 Jul 2025
Paperback
18 Sep 2017
Hardback
5 Sep 2023
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Stefan Zweig's classic novella of obsession, madness and chess

In 1941 a cruise ship is heading to Buenos Aires, and on board a group of eager passengers challenge the reigning world chess champion to a match. At first they lose pitifully, until a kind stranger aids by whispering instructions to them - he is a masterful chess player, and as they play, the game itself draws the stranger closer and closer to its secrets.

Stefan Zweig's acclaimed novella Chess is a disturbing, intensely dramatic depiction of the cost of obsession, set in a Central Europe traumatized by the psychological influence of Nazism.
  • Published: 18 September 2017
  • ISBN: 9780241305164
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 96
  • RRP: $17.99
Categories:

Also by Stefan Zweig

Six Stories
Beware of Pity
Impatience Of The Heart
Chess
See all

Praise for Chess

A brilliant writer

New York Times

One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig's stories

Edmund de Waal

Stefan Zweig was a late and magnificent bloom from the hothouse of fin de siecle Vienna

The Wall Street Journal

Zweig is one of the masters of the short story and novella, and by 'one of the masters' I mean that he's up there with Maupassant, Chekhov, James, Poe, or indeed anyone you care to name

Nick Lezard, Guardian

A new favourite writer of mine

Wes Anderson

Perhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game

Economist

His great achievement in short form

The Times