Description

90 Classic titles celebrating 90 years of Penguin Books

My delight in playing turned to a lust for playing, my lust for playing into a compulsion to play, a mania, a frenetic fury that filled not only my waking hours but also came to invade my sleep. I could think of nothing but chess, I thought only in chess moves and chess problems . . .

As a chess obsessive, what if you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to play the world champion, but it might send you to the edge of madness . . . and tip you over?

Publisher Review

A brilliant writer-New York Times

One of the joys of recent years is the translation into English of Stefan Zweig’s stories-Edmund de Waal

Stefan Zweig was a late and magnificent bloom from the hothouse of fin de siecle Vienna-The Wall Street Journal

Zweig is one of the masters of the short story and novella, and by ‘one of the masters’ I mean that he’s up there with Maupassant, Chekhov, James, Poe, or indeed anyone you care to name-Nick Lezard, Guardian

A new favourite writer of mine-Wes Anderson

Perhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game-Economist

His great achievement in short form-The Times