"Chess Story", the last masterpiece by Stefan Zweig, was published in 1943 in Stockholm. A posthumous edition, as the author committed suicide the previous year along with his second wife in Brazil, the place where he went into self-exile in 1940. He considered the destruction of Europe in the 1940s as the downfall of all his work. "Chess Story" is a barely concealed confession. On the ship, en route from New York to Rio and Buenos Aires, where several European passengers, fleeing the violence and confusion of Nazism, seek refuge in Argentina and Brazil as places of exile and hope, Dr. B. faces Mirko Czentovic, the dark world champion, in a game of chess. The author magnificently develops the theme of spiritual confinement that can only find an outlet in madness. Before traveling, Dr. B. was subjected by the Nazis to a special imprisonment in a completely empty hotel room, with nothing to occupy or entertain his mind, until he discovered a manual with chess games that he began to memorize and replay from memory. Having exhausted the book's resources, his mind led him to play games against himself, thus beginning to undergo a schizophrenic breakdown that was to prove fatal. The narrative depicts the struggle of spirit and imagination—characteristics of the old world—against the inner demon and the infallible and stubborn logic of modern barbarism.

The novella was adapted into a film by Gerd Oswald in 1960, in a "classic", atmospheric German movie starring Curd Jurgens (Dr. B./'Werner von Basil'), Mario Adorf (Mirko Czentovic), Hansjorg Felmy, and Claire Bloom.