The CHESS NOVEL, the last masterpiece of STEFAN ZWEIG, was published in 1943 in Stockholm. It is a posthumous publication, as the author committed suicide the previous year along with his second wife in Brazil, the place he went into exile in 1940. He considered the destruction of Europe in the 1940s as the downfall of all his work.
The Chess Novel serves as a barely concealed confession. On the ship, on a route from New York to Rio and Buenos Aires, where several European passengers, fleeing the violence and chaos of Nazism, seek refuge in Argentina and Brazil as a place of exile and hope, Dr. B. faces the dark world champion Mirko Czentovic in a game of chess.
The author magnificently develops the theme of mental imprisonment that can only find an outlet in madness. Before traveling, Dr. B. suffered a specific confinement by the Nazis in a completely empty hotel room, with nothing to occupy or entertain his mind until he discovered a manual of chess games that he began to memorize and replay from memory.
Having exhausted the sources of the book, his mind led him to play games against himself, and thus he began to undergo a schizophrenic breakdown that was destined to be fatal. The narrative depicts the struggle of spirit and imagination — characteristics of the old world — against the internal demon and the stubborn logic of modern barbarism.
[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]
