The key ideas

Chess Story

Stefan Zweig, 1942

A passenger liner sails from New York to Buenos Aires. On board is the world chess champion, a man who cannot write three sentences without a mistake but charges two hundred and fifty dollars a game. A rich Scotsman pays to play him with the whole smoking room, and they lose. Then, in the second game, someone behind them whispers and stops a hand that is already reaching for a pawn. This man insists he has not sat at a chessboard in twenty-five years.

Who it is for

For anyone who loves short fiction you finish in one evening and keep thinking about long after. For people who play chess, or who once gave it up. For students who were set “Chess Story” for class.

Nothing on earth weighs on the human mind like nothing.

Flashes on deck

New York, a passenger liner leaving for Buenos Aires at midnight. People crowd in to see friends off, telegraph boys shout out names, a band plays. Close by, a light flashes sharply two or three times: reporters are photographing someone famous.

“You have a rare bird on board,” a friend tells the narrator. It is Mirko Czentovic, the world chess champion. He has toured all of America with his tournaments and is sailing to Argentina for new victories.

The narrator, an Austrian, is travelling with his wife. But all his life he has wanted a close look at people possessed by a single idea. It is twelve days to Rio, and the champion's cabin is only six doors from his.

So begins Stefan Zweig's “Chess Story”, written in the last months of his life.

Balaam's donkey

A winter evening in a remote South Slav village. The priest smokes a long peasant pipe and, as on every evening, plays his three games with the gendarmerie sergeant. Beside them sits his foster son Mirko, fair-haired and broad in the brow, saying nothing. His father, a poor boatman on the Danube, was run down one night by a grain steamer. At fourteen, Mirko still counts on his fingers. He never asks about anything and stares at the board with empty eyes, like a sheep at pasture.

Sleigh bells ring: an old woman is dying, and the priest is called to her. “Well, will you finish the game?” the sergeant jokes. The boy takes the priest's seat. In fourteen moves the sergeant is beaten.

“Balaam's donkey!” cries the priest when he comes back, and he loses too. In a café in town, a fifteen-year-old in a sheepskin coat stands in the corner with his eyes down, then beats everyone in turn. At twenty, Mirko is world champion.

There is one thing he cannot do: play blindfold. The board has to be in front of his eyes, and even as a famous man he carries a pocket chess set. He poses for soap advertisements and sells his name for a “Philosophy of Chess” that a poor student wrote for him. He himself cannot write three sentences without a mistake.

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About the author

Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna in 1881 and became one of the most widely read writers of his time, a master of the novella and the biography. In 1934 he left Austria, lived in England and then in Brazil. He finished “Chess Story” in Petrópolis, Brazil, where he died in February 1942; the book came out after his death.

All books by this author: Stefan Zweig

Terms from the book

  • bishop
  • Czentovic: Mirko Czentovic, the world chess champion. The son of a poor boatman, raised by a village priest. At twenty-one he can hardly write, yet he has not lost a single game in many months.
  • McConnor: A Scottish engineer who made his fortune drilling for oil in California. He cannot stand losing and pays Czentovic to play him.
  • Dr. B.: A Viennese lawyer from an old Austrian family, about forty-five. After the Nazis came, the Gestapo held him in solitary isolation for several months.
  • Balaam: In the Old Testament, Balaam's donkey suddenly spoke with a human voice. The phrase is used of a silent person who suddenly surprises everyone.
  • blindfold: Playing chess without a board, holding the position in your memory and calling the moves out loud. Czentovic cannot play this way.
  • queen: The strongest chess piece. A pawn that reaches the last rank can become a new queen.
  • draw: The end of a chess game in which nobody wins. Chess players also call it a remis.
  • Alekhine: Alexander Alekhine, world chess champion from 1927. Dr. B. knows his games by heart.
  • Bogoljubov: Efim Bogoljubov, one of the strongest chess players of the 1920s, who twice played Alekhine for the world title.
  • Schuschnigg: Kurt Schuschnigg, Chancellor of Austria. In March 1938, under pressure from Hitler, he resigned, and German troops marched into the country.
  • Gestapo: The secret state police of Nazi Germany. It arrested, interrogated and tortured opponents of the regime.
  • Metropole: A Vienna hotel taken over by the Gestapo after Austria was annexed. Important prisoners were held there in single rooms.
  • chess poisoning: Dr. B.'s own name for his illness: an obsession with playing against himself that grew into a fever.
  • dilettante: An amateur who does something for pleasure, not for money. The word comes from the Italian diletto, pleasure.

All terms

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