Very funny. I have read Stephan Zweig's Schachnovelle when I was in highschool, for my list of German books. And this christmas, over 40 years later, I got the same novelle in Dutch translation from my mother. I haven't started reading it yet. But usually, rereading a book you have read in your teens confronts you with how much escaped your eye at that young age. I'm looking forward to reading it and saved it for this summer.
Chess & Literature
Sort:
I will add it to my list. Thanks for piquing my interest! There is a lot of backlog on my list so it may take some time for me to get to it, but I will read it.
I recently read a fun few paragraphs about chess in Poe's The Murders in the Rue Morgue that made me rethink the game some. He basically says that other games like checkers and rook (whist) are more fair analytical contests and that chess results are determined by concentration, rather than analysis. I agree that all games are luck-based, even when they aren't obviously so, but I don't think he gave chess its due. I've been getting addicted to sacrificing pieces in my chess games recently, and maybe it is partly luck, but I think it's more analysis that leads me to decide if and when to throw pieces at my opponents. I haven't got to reading Poe's most famous chess story yet, so maybe this is just the character's interpretation and not Poe's...
The Netflix production of The Queen's Gambit has drawn some attention to the Walter Tevis novel on which it is based. But I'm not sure how much awareness there is of a great work of fiction focussed on chess: Stefan Zweig's novella Chess ( the title has been translated in a few different ways). It is intense, throught-provoking and disturbing. Well worth devoting the few hours it takes to read it.