Set in different times, from Ancient Rome to 20th century Europe, these stories are a valuable reminder of why he was one of the most famous Jewish writers in the first half of the last century
December 31, 2025 12:48
Stefan Zweig was one of the most famous Jewish writers in the first half of the 20th century. After the war his reputation went into decline. More recently, however, a series of biographies and new translations of his best work has changed all that. In the words of Salman Rushdie, “Stefan Zweig’s time of oblivion is over for good… It’s good to have him back”.
One of his best-known works is A Chess Story, also known as The Royal Game, first published in 1941 and now reissued. The story takes place on a steamship leaving New York for Buenos Aires. The narrator becomes fascinated by Mirko Czentovic, the most unlikely of world chess champions, the son of a dirt-poor boatman from a small provincial town near the Danube. There’s something very strange about this chess prodigy. He has no obvious qualities apart from his genius for chess.
There’s another strange figure on board, Dr. B., like Zweig an Austrian refugee, also fascinated with Czentovic, and he later tells the narrator the dark story of how he becomes fascinated with chess and gets to play the world champion. Dr. B. was arrested by the Gestapo and tortured in solitary confinement, with only a book on chess for company. The story of these two unlikely chess geniuses is one of Zweig’s most fascinating works.
Pushkin Press have also published five Jewish stories by Zweig, two from the early 1900s, and three from the late 1920s and 1930s. The first, Buchmendel (1929), is one of Zweig’s greatest. It tells the story of an obsessive bibliophile from Galicia who has moved to Vienna. He runs his book business from a classic Viennese café. It is a story of obsession and innocence, but, above all, it is a wonderful evocation of a bygone world. Perhaps one of Zweig’s greatest gifts was his ability to bring Vienna’s past to life, as in his famous memoir, The World of Yesterday, published posthumously in 1942.
The other four stories are all tales of Jews. One is the story of a self-made Jewish businessman who discovers that he is estranged from his wife and daughter and suddenly feels terribly alone. The two earliest stories, from the 1900s, are very different. The Miracles of Life is set in Early Modern Antwerp. An artist is commissioned to paint a Madonna and child and chooses an unlikely model, Esther, a Jewish orphan rescued from a pogrom. The artist becomes fascinated with Esther and she in turn becomes obsessed with the child who has been chosen as the model for the infant Jesus.
In The Snow is set in a small medieval German town close to the Polish border. It is Chanukah. The Flagellants, “wild, fanatically religious men”, are hunting Jews. Like The Miracles of Life it is the story of a terrible pogrom as “the poor, lost, frozen Jews” flee for their lives.
The final story, The Buried Candelabrum, begins in ancient Rome. Once again, a murderous horde is on the rampage. This time the Vandals, “the dreaded pirates of the Mediterranean”, are out to sack Rome and to terrorise the Jews. At the heart of the story is the Candelabrum, the famous Menorah, “Moses’s Seven-Branched Candlestick, the Lampstand from Solomon’s House…” Can the Jews rescue the great Menorah from its terrible period of exile?
These Jewish stories are all desperately dark, set in different times, from Ancient Rome to early 20th century central Europe. Buchmendel is a masterpiece, one of Zweig’s very best stories, perhaps his best of all, closely rivalled by his famous chess story. Together they are a valuable reminder of why Zweig was one of central Europe’s greatest Jewish writers.
A Chess Story
By Stefan Zweig
Pushkin Press, £9.99
The Last Miracle:
Jewish Stories
By Stefan Zweig
Pushkin Press, £10.99
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