Book description
On a cruiseship bound for Buenos Aires, a wealthy passenger challenges
the world chess champion to a match. He accepts with a sneer. He will
beat anyone, he says. But only if the stakes are high. Soon, the chess
board is surrounded. At first, the challenger crumbles before the mind
of the master. But then, a soft-spoken voice from the crowd begins to
whisper nervous suggestions. Perfect moves, brilliant predictions. The
speaker has not played a game for more than twenty years, he says. He is
wholly unknown. But somehow, he is also entirely formidable...
Stefan Zweig was born in 1881 in Vienna to a wealthy Austrian-Jewish
family. Recognition as a writer came early for Zweig; by the age of
forty, he had already won literary fame. In 1934, with Nazism
entrenched, Zweig left Austria for England, and became a British
citizen in 1940. In 1941 he and his second wife went to Brazil, where
they committed suicide. Zweig's best-known works of fiction are Beware
of Pity (1939) and The Royal Game (1944), but his most outstanding
accomplishments were his many biographies, which were based on
psychological interpretation.
Anthea Bell translated E. T. A. Hoffman's The Life and Opinions of
the Tomcat Murr for Penguin Classics and has received a number of
translation awards.
