Book description
On a cruise ship bound for Buenos Aires, an electifying encounter
takes place between the reigning world chess champion and an unknown
passenger. The stranger's diffident manner masks his extraordinary
ability to challenge the grandmaster in a game of chess; it also
conceals his dark and damaged past, the horror of which emerges as the
game unfolds.
STEFAN ZWEIG was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy
Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first
known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. Zweig travelled
widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoying literary fame.
His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. In the same year, with
the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British
citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil
where in 1942 he and his wife were found in bed in an apparent double
suicide.
