SUMMARY - The Royal Game & Other Stories By Stefan Zweig


Book Description

* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. By reading this summary, you will learn what interests you in identifying and cultivating your gifts. You will also learn: that your talents reveal part of your individuality; that strengthening your faculties gives you the opportunity to accomplish yourself; that by perfecting his chess skills, the main character has sharpened his intelligence and learned to better control his emotions; that by devoting yourself to your passion, you can overcome moral trials. Published posthumously in 1943, Stefan Zweig's short story The Chess Player relates the meeting and confrontation of two chess players who are at odds with each other. One is a peasant who has become a world champion thanks to his skill at chess, the only talent he possesses. The other is an Austrian aristocrat, whom the Gestapo officers have subjected to total isolation in a hotel room. To resist this psychological torture, he played mental chess games. Despite their different backgrounds, each of them benefited from exploiting their talent. What benefits can you gain from your passion? *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!




The World of Yesterday


Book Description

Stefan Zweig (1881–1942) was a poet, novelist, and dramatist, but it was his biographies that expressed his full genius, recreating for his international audience the Elizabethan age, the French Revolution, the great days of voyages and discoveries. In this autobiography he holds the mirror up to his own age, telling the story of a generation that "was loaded down with a burden of fate as was hardly any other in the course of history." Zweig attracted to himself the best minds and loftiest souls of his era: Freud, Yeats, Borgese, Pirandello, Gorky, Ravel, Joyce, Toscanini, Jane Addams, Anatole France, and Romain Rolland are but a few of the friends he writes about.




The Governess and Other Stories


Book Description

These four stories illustrate the wide range of Zweig’s subject matter dating from quite early in his career as a writer of fiction (The Governess, rooted in a world of strict Edwardian morality), to late (Did He Do It?, almost an English detective story set near Bath, where Zweig lived in exile). In addition The Miracles of Life, set in 16th-century Antwerp during the time of Protestant iconoclasm, and Downfall of a Heart both address the theme of anti-Semitism. Pushkin Collection editions feature a spare, elegant series style and superior, durable components. The Collection is typeset in Monotype Baskerville, litho-printed on Munken Premium White Paper and notch-bound by the independently owned printer TJ International in Padstow. The covers, with French flaps, are printed on Colorplan Pristine White Paper. Both paper and cover board are acid-free and Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) certified.




Balzac


Book Description

Zweig devoted ten years of research and writing to Balzac, which he regarded as his crowning achievement. This late work reads like a picaresque novel, with Balzac’s quest for “a woman with a fortune” and recurrent episodes of the author chasing an elusive pot of gold driving the story. This biography of one classic author by another is filled with Zweig’s characteristic psychological insights. He portrays the energy and “exuberance of imagination” that produced some two thousand characters in La comédie humaine, as well as the daily details of the coffee-chugging writer’s life, his manic writing schedule, method of correcting proofs, dealing with publishers and reviewers, signing contracts, doing marketing and publicity. Balzac blends biography and literary history in a highly readable volume that will teach you French cultural history as you laugh out loud. “[Balzac] is sure to entertain, instruct and charm ... It is a work of art, ... alive with the teeming life of its model ... It is true both to facts and to the more elusive psychological and spiritual truth of a man who ... has remained one of the most mysterious of great creators.” – Henri Peyre, Sterling professor of French Literature, Yale University, The New York Times




Concepts and Persons


Book Description

The Tanner Lectures are a collection of educational and scientific discussions relating to human values. Conducted by leaders in their fields, the lectures are presented at renowned institutions around the world, including the Universities of Oxford, Harvard, and Yale. In January 2019, University of Toronto's Michael Lambek, professor, former Canada Research Chair, and member of the Royal Society of Canada, delivered the Tanner Lecture at the University of Michigan's Department of Philosophy on the topic of Concepts and Persons. As well as tracing his career in social and cultural anthropology, Lambek's Tanner Lecture spoke on the intersection of anthropology and philosophy as a means of articulating the moral basis of human action. By elucidating where anthropology and philosophy might intersect, Lambek's lecture is a profound examination of the human condition, and is beautifully captured in this publication. Concepts and Persons recounts the lecture as delivered at the prestigious event, the commentary of three distinguished respondents, and Lambek's own response to that commentary. The book's presentation of the lecture also includes a rich and layered set of notes that augment the lecture significantly, as well as additional clarification and thought that has developed since the event.




Elvis: The Siege of Graceland and Other Stories


Book Description

A very different view of the world of Elvis Presley is presented in these comic fictional stories. His manager, Colonel Parker, his family and the Memphis Mafia all feature in episodes such as the siege of Graceland when the military police try to arrest Elvis. Fans of the King of Rock and Roll will learn of Liberace's hair-raising encounter with Elvis's pet chimpanzee, screen legend Greta Garbo coming out of retirement to make a film musical, and the invitation from HM The Queen to Elvis to attend the Royal Highland Games. Some stories are based on real events, such as the Million Dollar Quartet and being drafted into the army, but here they are given a comic twist. They are written by a lifelong fan who asks: Who'd have thought Elvis and life at Graceland could be so funny.




An Education in Happiness


Book Description

Happiness "is neither a privilege of the few, nor a fleeting state of mind: it is hidden behind a door that every person can open once they have found it, at the end of an arduous journey of self-discovery." The two Nobel Prize-winning writers Rabindranath Tagore and Hermann Hesse are arguably very different: one comes to us from the core of Indian culture, the other from the very heart of Old Europe; the former is an eternal wanderer, the latter a determined armchair traveller. Still, there are extraordinary affinities between their works, and they both understood that the path to happiness is paved with small acts and simple notions. Flavia Arzeni’s book offers us an oasis of stability and calm in which we can find the answers to our fundamental concerns about life and happiness.




The New Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor


Book Description

Sinbad the Sailor is reborn as a young, adventurous man in modern day Algeria, who has joined the waves of North African immigration into Europe. Accompanied by a mysterious mongrel and his Senegalese friend Robinson, this lover of women and beauty embarks on a journey around the Mediterranean—from Algiers to Damascus, passing through Rome, Paris, Baghdad, through the refugee camps and the deceitful glimmer of the Western world—that takes him on a headlong pursuit of happiness and love. A tale of our times—sometimes cruel, often funny and always fascinating—this novel tells the story of a man coming to grips with the stark realities of war within the framework of legend. It is at once a reconciliation of East and West and a resounding judgement on the state of the modern world.




Enchantment


Book Description

It was a memorable summer: with the broken-down old road that suddenly turned into a strip of gleaming asphalt, and the abandoned motorbike the three boys found as a rusty heap and built into a racer. But it was also more than that, more than a distraction from the boredom of their small Tuscan town, than a few weeks of racing and dodging the attentions of the local Marshal. For Jacopo and his two friends, it began their journeys out into the world, separated by thousands of miles, steered by something other than fate-helped on their way, and controlled... Tautly written and deeply moving, Enchantment is more than a simple coming-of-age story, it is a powerful, original novel from an important, compelling new author.




The Inheritance


Book Description

Daniel Loew, a poet based in London, has been told since childhood that one day he would become his wealthy uncle’s only heir. When he learns of his uncle’s death, in Caracas, a few weeks have passed. A close friend of his uncle’s tells Loew that he alone has been named executor of the will and blocks Loew from receiving his inheritance. In a harrowing chase from Venezuela to Miami, via Hamburg and Panama City, against a background of political upheavals as Hugo Chàvez attempts and fails in his 1992 military coup, Loew leads a desperate fight to regain his considerable inheritance.