They are full of passion all the time, but it is the passion of a gambler rather than a lover, cold, calculating and dangerous.

They are constantly on the alert, always ready and willing to follow the trail of an adventure to the very edge of the abyss. Such men are described with a certain facile contempt as lady-killers, but the term has a nugget of truthful observation in it, for in fact all the passionate instincts of the chase are present in their ceaseless vigilance: the stalking of the prey, the excitement and mental cruelty of the kill. Louis Public Library.“He was the kind of young man whose handsome face has brought him plenty of success in the past and is now ever-ready for a new encounter, a fresh-experience, always eager to set off into the unknown territory of a little adventure, never taken by surprise because he has worked out everything in advance and is waiting to see what happens, a man who will never overlook any erotic opportunity, whose first glance probes every woman's sensuality, and explores it, without discriminating between his friend's wife and the parlour-maid who opens the door to him. For more information please email: on-street parking is available, as well as paid lots adjacent to Kingside Diner and at the Schlafly branch of the St. Hors d’oeuvres and refreshments are provided. The games they engage in become an allegory for the contest between a totalitarian will to power and the extravagantly overgrown life of the pre-War Austro-German intelligentsia.įree admission for WCHOF members. Today, Zweig is best known for his memoir, The World of Yesterday, and for a sensibility that inspired Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel. The narrative focuses on a series of matches between a brilliant and monomaniacal chess master, and a lawyer who learned to play chess entirely in his head.

The five stories, which span Zweig’s career, are sophisticated and suspenseful portraits reflecting the intellectual culture of prewar Germany and the bleakness of WWI. The Royal Game is Zweig’s final achievement, sent to his American publisher only days before his death in 1942. At the height of his literary career, he was the most translated European writer in the world, whose death made the front page of the New York Times. Rediscover the work of Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist, and biographer Stefan Zweig.

The chess player zweig