Product Description

Two of Stefan Zweig's most compelling novellas are presented together in one volume. As heard on BBC Radio 4's "Book at Bedtime", "Twenty-four Hours in the Life of a Woman" is the story of a middle-aged English widow who travels through Europe to escape loneliness and boredom. One evening, during her stay at the French Riviera, while enjoying the elegant atmosphere of the Monte Carlo Casino, she becomes mesmerised by the obsessive gambling of young Polish aristocrat. This fateful encounter leads to passion, despair and death, changing their lives forever. "The Royal Game" takes place on a cruise ship bound for Buenos Aires, where a tantalising encounter takes place between the reigning world chess champion and an unknown passenger. The stranger's diffident manner masks his extraordinary ability to challenge the Grand Master in a game of chess, but also conceals his dark and damaged past, the horror of which emerges as the game unfolds.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #24329 in Books
• Published on: 2006-06-30
• Original language: German
• Binding: Paperback
• 133 pages

Review
In the 1920s and 30s, Stefan Zweig was one of the most famous writers in the world. Thanks to the enterprising Pushkin Press, it is now possible to read the novellas on which his reputation must finally depend... He deserves to be famous again, and for good. --Paul Bailey, The Times Literary Supplement

About the Royal Game: Perhaps the best chess story ever written, perhaps the best about any game. Never mind that you may never have moved a pawn to King four; the story will grip you. --The Economist

About the Author
STEFAN ZWEIG was born in 1881 in Vienna, a member of a wealthy Austrian-Jewish family. He studied in Berlin and Vienna and was first known as a poet and translator, then as a biographer. His stories and novellas were collected in 1934. Zweig travelled widely, living in Salzburg between the wars, and enjoying literary fame. In 1934, with the rise of Nazism, he briefly moved to London, taking British citizenship. After a short period in New York, he settled in Brazil where in 1942 he and his wife were found dead in bed in an apparent double suicide.

Customer Reviews

Two Brilliant Novellas
This is another essential book for any reader who loves European literature from the past century. All the elegance of style and insight about people you find in other works by Zweig are present here too, in two novella length stories of about 60 pages each. Both, despite their short length, feel extremely substantial, and carry a great deal of emotional weight.

'Twenty Four Hours in the Life of a Woman' is a well crafted story told in flashback by a lady of advanced years in a resort on the French Riviera - about the single day which changed the course of her life. 'The Royal Game' is a more tense and unusual affair, a story about chess and sanity, set aboard an ocean liner. Both stories live long in the memory.

I also have to add that I love these Pushkin editions - as paperbacks go, they feel very high-quality and are beautifully designed.