Schachnovelle

The improbable had occurred: the world champion, the champion of countless tournaments, had been defeated by an unknown man, a man who had not touched a chessboard for twenty or twenty-five years. Our friend, the anonymous one, the Ignotus, had defeated the strongest chess player on earth in open combat. There is great astonishment when the unassuming Dr. B., an Austrian émigré on a passenger ship from New York to Buenos Aires, inadvertently faces the reigning chess world champion Mirko Czentovic and effortlessly defeats his mechanically routine opponent with playful ease. However, the game of chess brings forth memories of the terror of his imprisonment during the National Socialist regime and reopens a psychological wound that once again threatens Dr. B.'s mental health.