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estranger0 's review for:
Chess Story
by Stefan Zweig
Zweig's final novel Chess Story is about two men having a chess match. Wow! who'd a thought. But wait, there's more... Yes, actually, there is more than just two men playing chess. This book goes deeper than just the match, in fact, it rarely mentions the actions of the game and primarily focuses on the psychological aspects of the players, including the two men's backstory's, past experiences with chess, and attitudes in match.
The narrator concentrates on the obsession of chess between the two men, with Czentovic (antagonist?) being an idiot-savant who is unexplainably god at chess but terrible at anything else, and Dr. B, a lawyer who was captured by Nazis and forced into isolation for an extremely long period of time, where he studied a chess book for the time being, memorizing and mastering every match provided in the book.
The part describing B's time in confinement is the longest part in the novel, which I think helps in portraying the effects of prolonged solitude, isolation, and loneliness, as well as showing what the human mind is resorts to when under the same conditions for days, weeks, years on end: obsession ad madness. B literally gets 'chess fever' by fixating on the chess book for so long, and falls into a nervous attack one night in bed and proceeds to spew out algebraic chess notation, which the hospital staff can't hardly explain.
This novella presents us with a fascinating view into the psychology of the human mind, especially the topics of obsession and loneliness, which I think gives the most realistic and impressive portrayal of loneliness I've seen in a while besides from Kate Gompert's story in Infinite Jest. Must read, and it won't even take you a day to read this.
The narrator concentrates on the obsession of chess between the two men, with Czentovic (antagonist?) being an idiot-savant who is unexplainably god at chess but terrible at anything else, and Dr. B, a lawyer who was captured by Nazis and forced into isolation for an extremely long period of time, where he studied a chess book for the time being, memorizing and mastering every match provided in the book.
The part describing B's time in confinement is the longest part in the novel, which I think helps in portraying the effects of prolonged solitude, isolation, and loneliness, as well as showing what the human mind is resorts to when under the same conditions for days, weeks, years on end: obsession ad madness. B literally gets 'chess fever' by fixating on the chess book for so long, and falls into a nervous attack one night in bed and proceeds to spew out algebraic chess notation, which the hospital staff can't hardly explain.
This novella presents us with a fascinating view into the psychology of the human mind, especially the topics of obsession and loneliness, which I think gives the most realistic and impressive portrayal of loneliness I've seen in a while besides from Kate Gompert's story in Infinite Jest. Must read, and it won't even take you a day to read this.