Group Read, January 2023: Chess Story

Our January group read is Chess Story by Stefan Zweig. Please join in this short read and post any comments on this thread.

Mine just arrived in the mail - it is very short!

I'll be reading this toward the end of the month -- got involved in something long first! Oops!

I am going to be starting this book tomorrow.

Not a book, a short story. I enjoyed it because it's well-written and definitely has something to say. Yet it's also oddly empty at the end, which is I suppose the point.

I also have finished Chess Story and thought it was very well done. Apparently this is the author's last work as he and his wife committed suicide just days after sending it to his publisher. Perhaps the emptiness at the end of his story was foreshadowing his suicide decision.

Very much enjoyed this character study.
I will be looking for some of his non-fiction as this is mainly what he wrote. Also a biography as I am wondering how much of the interrogation story may have been from true sources, possibly from friends who remained in Austria.

I enjoyed the story a lot. It was a little slow in the beginning but the study of the obsessed mind was fascinating.

>7 JayneCM: I cannot recommend his memoirs The World of Yesterday enough - it is one of the best books I have ever read about the Habsburg Empire and the world before and after WWI.

>8 Henrik_Madsen: I will have to look for it. All his nonfiction looks fascinating.