I have always been interested in any kind of monomaniac obsessed by a single idea, for the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity; characters like this, apparently remote from reality, are like termites using their own material to build a remarkable and unique small-scale version of the world.

Mr. B. finds himself going mad in the face of the void during internment at a Nazi camp. After 4 months, he manages to steal a book – anything to occupy his mental faculties. Dismayed by the contents of the book he manages to purloin, but with no other alternatives, B. teaches himself chess and studies the booklet of grand master games until he has memorized all of them over the course of a few months of otherwise utter monotony until he is once again faced with the void. He discusses the inherent, paradoxical insanity of trying to deploy the kind of strategy necessary to a good chess game against oneself. It requires complete bifurcation of the brain which is not really achievable. Additionally, it requires several moves worth of lookahead into the opponent's strategy that one must not permit himself to recall he himself is employing on the other side of the board/brain without also losing sight of reality... He would become violently impatient with his slower self, and this climaxed in an outburst targeting the guard as he yells something to the effect of "make your move damn it!"

Dr. B. is the perfect candidate to play against Mirko, the reigning champ, who just so happens to be on the cruise with the narrator who he wants to profile bc of aforementioned obsession^^ B. is nervous to play though, for until he saw the actual chessboards on the cruise, he had repressed the memory that chess was an actual game played with real pieces between two separate people, and wasn't sure that he would be able to materialize the abstract notion of chess as a game which only existed in the book he stole and in his head into real play, let alone against the world champ. The scene is set, you should read the book.

Zweig and his wife took their lives himself within days of finishing this masterpiece:

Zweig, feeling increasingly depressed about the situation in Europe and the future for humanity, wrote in a letter to author Jules Romains, "My inner crisis consists in that I am not able to identify myself with the me of passport, the self of exile". He had been despairing at the future of Europe and its culture. He wrote: "I think it better to conclude in good time and in erect bearing a life in which intellectual labour meant the purest joy and personal freedom the highest good on Earth". On 23 February 1942, the Zweigs were found dead of a barbiturate overdose in their house in the city of Petrópolis, having taken their own lives. Their bodies were found holding hands.

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