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The Royal Game

of Stefan Zweig

translated by Silvia Bittencourt

Ilustração da peça do cavalo, do jogo de xadrez, feita de pedaços geométricos na cor preta, sobre fundo de cor bege

available here

Synopsis

Traveling from New York to Buenos Aires by ship, a group of passengers pay Mirko Czentóvic, a world chess champion, to play a match with them. The chess player has no trouble facing his amateur opponents, until the mysterious Doctor B appears, an Austrian lawyer with an aged appearance who miraculously manages to calculate moves and strategies that can stand up to the arrogant champion. In the middle of the sea, the two engage in a fierce match, which brings to light a story of obsession and isolation, marked by Nazism and imprisonment.

Genres

why we recorded it

Stefan Zweig sent "The Royal Game" to his publisher in 1942, a few days before committing suicide in Petrópolis, Brazil, alongside his wife. The novel – the only one by the Austrian author to deal directly with the theme of Nazism – combines autobiographical elements with the plot, which, nonetheless, seems to take place in a future that the writer would not get to see, after the defeat of the Germans. Read by Guilherme Weber, the narrator’s movements light up and as we witness him moving towards and away from his opponents, as if he too were involved in this war game.

Stefan Zweig read by Guilherme Weber

Guilherme Weber

Guilherme Weber founded the Sutil Companhia de Teatro in Curitiba, Brazil, with Felipe Hirsch. He has twice won the APCA Award for Best Actor in Theater and Television. With the film Deserto (2016), he was awarded Best Director at the Los Angeles Brazilian Film Festival. He has acted in Rede Globo soap operas, such as Da cor do pecado (2004) and Cara e coragem (2022), and series on HBO and Netflix.

author Stefan Zweig

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was born in Vienna to a Jewish family. With the rise of Nazism, he emigrated to London and New York, finally settling in Brazil. A novelist, biographer, poet and translator, he is the author of Brazil, Land of the Future (1941) and The World of Yesterday (1942), among other books.

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