The Pawn’s Gambit: On adapting Stefan Zweig’s “Chess Story”
lareviewofbooks.org
lareviewofbooks.org
The la review website doesn't render on my smartphone (Firefox), but just reading the wiki plot (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Royal_Game?wprov=sfla1), it sounds absolutely brilliant.
I can "relate" to the isolation and frantic labor on some project, which is unhealthy enough on its own. To do so under Nazi domination as a way to survive interegations with no other intellectual outlets possible, leading to project induced psychosis, is just frightening. And it's all portrayed in such a relatively light hearted, optimistic atmosphere of a transatlantic ship bringing bored passengers together for a nice game of chess. Good job, Zweig.
Anyways, time to check out the adaptions.