Rediscover the work of Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist, and biographer Stefan Zweig. At the height of his literary career, he was the most translated European writer in the world, whose death made the front page of the New York Times. The Royal Game is Zweig’s final achievement, sent to his American publisher only days before his death in 1942. The five stories, which span Zweig’s career, are sophisticated and suspenseful portraits reflecting the intellectual culture of prewar Germany and the bleakness of WWI. Today, Zweig is best known for his memoir, The World of Yesterday, and for a sensibility that inspired Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. The narrative focuses on a series of matches between a brilliant and monomaniacal chess master, and a lawyer who learned to play chess entirely in his head. The games they engage in become an allegory for the contest between a totalitarian will to power and the extravagantly overgrown life of the pre-War Austro-German intelligentsia.
Free admission for WCHOF members. General admission is $5.
Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments are provided. For more information please email: events@worldchesshof.org.
Metered on-street parking is available, as well as paid lots adjacent to Kingside Diner and at the Schlafly branch of the St. Louis Public Library.
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Wednesday, Sep 19 - 6:30 pm Register Now