On 15 August 1941, Stefan Zweig and his wife set sail for Brazil, where they planned to settle after seven years of exile in England and America. At first he seems to have found the change of scene rejuvenating: he continued work on a biography of Balzac, started a new novel and a critical study of Montaigne, and finished his autobiography, The World of Yesterday, which starts in the late 19th century and romps through the interwar years, with vivid and comic descriptions of Toscanini, Freud and many other artists and intellectuals. Then he began yet another book: Schachnovelle ('Chess Novella'), which was published two years after his death, and now appears as The Royal Game. After he had edited the final draft, his wife typed up the manuscript and sent it to New York with a letter to his publisher. Shortly afterwards they were found dead, a double suicide.

LRB 3 April 2003 | PDF Download