Zweig’s ‘Chess’ is a novella that had been on my radar for far too long, a story about an unnamed narrator who serves only as a connection point to discuss the closed off chess world champion Marko Czentovic, a child prodigy who is extremely stupid in all fields but the movements on the chessboard, and his amateur opponent the unremarkable seeming Dr. B. I am going to draw obvious comparisons to Tevis’ ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ here, which I feel did a better job building from the archetype of a child prodigy. Though Tevis’ work was longer and hence had more opportunity to explore wider themes, ‘Chess’ only touching the elements of the books that focused on the game itself I feel Tevis did a much better job of visualising the games and making events out of them, where Zweig sort of skimmed over the games though they are the primary focus of the novella. He also touches the themes of the capacity for madness within the human mind, which is explored through a background story of Dr. B discovering chess when held in solitary confinement by the nazis, although something felt missing with this story within the story that occupied almost half the book.