Chess Story

Stefan Zweig’s posthumously published Chess Story is the tale of a legendary chess match played on an ocean liner leaving Nazi-occupied Europe. The world champion and a man who attained mastery of chess during a harrowing ordeal are locked in a battle that becomes far more than merely a game. Gripping and visceral, this unforgettable novella powerfully renders a psychological condition nearly impossible to convey in words. Ulrich Baer’s lively new translation beautifully captures Zweig’s nuanced mix of introspection and suspense.

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942), novelist, biographer, translator, and poet, was born in Austria and became one of the bestselling European authors of the 1920s and 30s. He is renowned for his psychologically astute fiction as well as enthralling studies of seminal figures such as Montaigne, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette, Balzac, Nietzsche, and Freud. His work has inspired stage and screen adaptations, including the films Letters from an Unknown Woman and The Grand Hotel Budapest by Wes Anderson. Exiled from Europe by the Nazis, he committed suicide in Petrópolis, Brazil, in 1942.

Ulrich Baer is a graduate of Harvard and Yale and has been awarded Guggenheim, Getty, and Humboldt fellowships. He is University Professor at New York University and has translated works by Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Buber, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Sigmund Freud.