Book review: “The Royal Game”

Unfortunately, the lost bank cards proved to be the most insignificant of the blows dealt to me last week.  So here is a post I wrote a while ago but never got around to uploading.

Why is it that chess players in fiction are always painted as crazy, or evil, or both?  I remember reading a study a while ago that compiled data from thousands of movies in which a character is portrayed as a chess player, and in something like 80 per cent of cases, the character was one of the bad guys.  Some notable examples include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Knight Moves, Blazing Saddles, multiple James Bond movies, and (arguably) the original version of the Thomas Crown Affair.  (For a more exhaustive and controversial list of chess-related movie scenes, see here.) 

Some books (later turned into films) have more directly tackled the topic of chess and mental instability, the most famous probably being The Luzhin Defence by Vladimir Nabokov.  This classic and surprisingly romantic story centres on a tormented Russian grandmaster, his love interest, and their battle with his mental illness.  And, interestingly, there’s quite a few tales from the real chess world that could be directly compared.  (If you’re feeling lazy, just watch the 2000 movie version, with Emily Watson as the female lead.)

And thus we turn to the subject of this review, the novella The Royal Game (or Schachnovelle, in German) by the famed Austrian author, Stefan Zweig.  My German co-worker recommended this short story to me, and I’m very glad – I devoured it in a single sitting on a flight from Canberra to Melbourne (it really is a very short book).

The story explores the mental anguish and struggle for sanity of the world’s best chess player, who mastered the game while attempting to survive torture by the Nazis.  The Royal Game is an even more fascinating read after one notes it was published in 1942, in the height of World War II and far before its conclusion could be known.  The author himself escaped Austria in 1934, following Hitler’s rise to power.  Add to that that this psychological drama was published posthumous following Zweig’s double suicide with his wife in Brazil in 1942, rumoured to be sparked by his despair over the future of a Hitler-controlled Europe, and the book takes on a whole new dimension of realism and intrigue.

The Royal Game left me feeling raw and shaken at the end, as I would imagine most readers would find the experience.  But there was an eerie hint of similarity in some of the sensations the book’s protagonist experiences as chess beings to slowly envelop first his subconscious thoughts, and then his very consciousness.  Anyone who’s experienced the disturbed sleep of a dream involving a chess game (which can particularly happen during intense chess events) can empathise to a very small degree with the plight of Zweig’s troubled master.  And the documented health risks of playing too much blindfold chess are certainly worth bearing in mind as the flashbacks to the Nazi psychological torture are detailed.

All in all, The Royal Game is harrowing, but a cracking read.  And, dare I say it, the book offers something of a wakeup call to those of us obsessed with the game, not only suggesting that there is more to life than sixty four squares and thirty two pieces, but warning us that the consequences of ignoring this suggestion are very real indeed.