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The Royal Game
- A Chess Story
- Narrated by: Dan Mellins-Cohen
- Length: 2 hrs and 12 mins
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Publisher's summary
The fame of the The Royal Game is evident in the number of translations. The last work of the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig can be read today in over 60 languages. The first translation into English appeared in New York in 1944. In Germany, the book has become a constant bestseller. The first-person narrator learns of the presence of the world chess champion Mirko Czentovic on a boat trip from New York to Buenos Aires. Together with his acquaintance Mc Connor and other chess players, the first-person narrator manages to challenge the world champion to a game of chess.
As expected, Mc Connor and the others clearly lose the first game. In the second game, the only way they can get is with the help of a strange man who later turns himself into Dr. B imagines preventing an embarrassing defeat at the last moment and getting a draw. Fascinated by the talent of Dr. B's, the first-person narrator asks him to take on Czentovic. Dr. B. agrees. During the conversation, Dr. B. under what tragic circumstances he started playing chess.
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Gravity of odds and the frailty of human hope
- By Darwin8u on 01-16-13
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Darkness at Noon
- By: Arthur Koestler
- Narrated by: Frank Muller
- Length: 8 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A fictional portrayal of an aging revolutionary, this novel is a powerful commentary on the nightmare politics of the troubled 20th century. Born in Hungary in 1905, a defector from the Communist Party in 1938, and then arrested in both Spain and France for his political views, Arthur Koestler writes from a wealth of personal experience.
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Literature as the ‘living memory’ of nations
- By ESK on 01-23-13
By: Arthur Koestler
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Immortality
- By: Milan Kundera
- Narrated by: Richmond Hoxie
- Length: 11 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Milan Kundera's sixth novel springs from a casual gesture of a woman to her swimming instructor, a gesture that creates a character in the mind of a writer named Kundera. Like Flaubert's Emma or Tolstoy's Anna, Kundera's Agnes becomes an object of fascination, of indefinable longing. From that character springs a novel, a gesture of the imagination that both embodies and articulates Milan Kundera's supreme mastery of the novel and its purpose: to explore thoroughly the great themes of existence.
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Cerebral Crosswinds in Parisian fields
- By W Perry Hall on 01-13-14
By: Milan Kundera
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The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman Burglar [Classic Tales Edition]
- By: Maurice Leblanc
- Narrated by: B.J. Harrison
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Fine-art aficionado. Master of disguise. Jewelry expert. Historian. Gentleman. Burglar. Arsene Lupin is all of these and more. In 1905, Maurice Leblanc introduced his gentleman-burglar in the story "L'Arrestation d'Arsène Lupin". Shortly thereafter, the stories were collected as one single volume. In these charming adventures, Lupin orchestrates a myriad of extravagant heists in the very face of the determined Inspector Ganimard.
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The Original Gentleman Thief
- By David S. Mathew on 09-24-17
By: Maurice Leblanc
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Nausea (New Directions Paperbook)
- By: Jean-Paul Sartre
- Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Sartre's greatest novel and existentialism's key text, now introduced by James Wood, and read by the inimitable Edoardo Ballerini. Nausea is the story of Antoine Roquentin, a French writer who is horrified at his own existence. In impressionistic, diary form, he ruthlessly catalogs his every feeling and sensation.
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Glad to have existed to enjoy reading this book!
- By mohammed on 08-11-21
By: Jean-Paul Sartre
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Night and Day
- By: Virginia Woolf
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 18 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Written before she began her experiments in the writing of fiction, Virginia Woolf's second novel, Night and Day, is a story about a group of young people trying to discover what it means to fall in love. It asks all the big questions: What does it mean to fall in love? Does marriage grant happiness? What is happiness? Night and Day is a conventional novel; however, it maps out for us the world of Virginia Woolf in its wondrous prose: For her it was the beginning, leading on to a prolonged engagement with her search for the means to express the "inner life".
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"After all, what is love?"
- By Eman Abd Allah on 12-13-16
By: Virginia Woolf
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Beware of Pity
- By: Stefan Zweig
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 14 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
In the twilight of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a young cavalry officer is invited to a dance at the home of a rich landowner. There - with a small act of attempted charity - he commits a simple faux pas. But from this seemingly insignificant blunder comes a tale of catastrophe arising from kindness and of honour poisoned by self-regard. Beware of Pity has all the intensity and the formidable sense of torment and of character of the very best of Zweig's work. Definitive translation by the award-winning Anthea Bell.
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One of my favorite authors
- By Adeliese Baumann on 03-21-18
By: Stefan Zweig
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Dombey and Son
- By: Charles Dickens
- Narrated by: Frederick Davidson
- Length: 36 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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In this carefully crafted novel, Dickens reveals the complexity of London society in the enterprising 1840s as he takes the listener into the business firm and home of one of its most representative patriarchs, Paul Dombey.
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Perfect pair
- By Philip on 03-25-08
By: Charles Dickens
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The Aspern Papers
- By: Henry James
- Narrated by: Jeremy Northam
- Length: 3 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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One of the wittiest and most scathing of Henry James' novellas, The Aspern Papers chronicles the attempt to extract the valuable letters of the famous and recently deceased poet Jeffrey Aspern from the hands of his past lover and formidable adversary in the battle Juliana Bordereau. The plot was reputedly suggested to James by a story he heard of an illicit attempt to get hold of several of Lord Byron's letters.
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Cat and mouse
- By Beyler Francois on 01-07-18
By: Henry James
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Swann's Way
- By: Marcel Proust
- Narrated by: Neville Jason
- Length: 21 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Swann’s Way is the first of seven volumes in Remembrance of Things Past. It sets the scene with the narrator’s memories being famously provoked by the taste of that little cake, the madeleine, accompanied by a cup of lime-flowered tea. It is an unmatched portrait of fin-de-siècle France.
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Not a book one reads but inhabits & floats through
- By Darwin8u on 02-24-13
By: Marcel Proust
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Bulldog Drummond
- By: Sapper
- Narrated by: Roy McMillan
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Demobilised officer, finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate if possible; excitement essential. When Captain Hugh Drummond, DSO, MC placed that advertisement, he was looking for adventure. What he finds is an international plot headed by the greatest criminal mastermind in the world.
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Fantastic Narration
- By nooch85 on 07-21-18
By: Sapper
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The World of Yesterday
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Stefan Zweig's memoir, The World of Yesterday, recalls the golden age of prewar Europe - its seeming permanence, its promise and its devastating fall with the onset of two world wars. Zweig's passionate, evocative prose paints a stunning portrait of an era that danced brilliantly on the brink of extinction. It is an unusually humane account of Europe from the closing years of the 19th century through to World War II, seen through the eyes of one of the most famous writers of his era.
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Lucidity whilst Civilization reverts to barbarism
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The Immortal Game
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Buy in print
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In this book, Stefan Zweig traces 12 fateful events of world history in his unique artistic style: from the conquest of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople by the Turks, to the Battle of Waterloo to Sir Robert Falcon Scott's tragic South Pole expedition. The human character and sometimes simple fate are decisive historic factors that have led to dramatic and lasting changes in the past. Often short, coincidental and highly dramatic moments have the potential to change the future of mankind in a decisive manner – the so called "Great Moments of Humanity".
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Good world history book
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Endgame
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A Trajedy
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Do Not buy
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Why has one game, alone among the thousands of games invented and played throughout human history, not only survived but thrived within every culture it has touched? What is it about its 32 figurative pieces, moving about its 64 black and white squares according to very simple rules, that has captivated people for nearly 1,500 years? Why has it driven some of its greatest players into paranoia and madness, and yet is hailed as a remarkably powerful intellectual tool?
-
-
Buy in print
- By Ivy Reisner on 08-30-11
By: David Shenk
-
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- Narrated by: Dan Mellins-Cohen
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In this book, Stefan Zweig traces 12 fateful events of world history in his unique artistic style: from the conquest of the Byzantine capital of Constantinople by the Turks, to the Battle of Waterloo to Sir Robert Falcon Scott's tragic South Pole expedition. The human character and sometimes simple fate are decisive historic factors that have led to dramatic and lasting changes in the past. Often short, coincidental and highly dramatic moments have the potential to change the future of mankind in a decisive manner – the so called "Great Moments of Humanity".
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Impress your friends with superior opening knowledge without the tedious study. Knowing the history of chess will prove your cleverness even more effectively than winning over the board. Once you have listened to this audiobook, you can explain the origins of the names to your opponent, and even if you lose the game, your opponent will still be impressed. Enjoy this capitvating romp through the names of the first few moves in this enjoyable addition to any chess player's library. Prepare to be surprised, amazed, amused and informed.
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In the summer of 1972, with a presidential crisis stirring in the United States and the cold war at a pivotal point, two men, the Soviet world chess champion Boris Spassky and his American challenger Bobby Fischer, met in the most notorious chess match of all time. Their showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, held the world spellbound for two months with reports of psychological warfare, ultimatums, political intrigue, cliffhangers, and farce to rival a Marx Brothers film.
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A dazzling biographical study of the greatest German philosopher of the nineteenth century by one of the most widely read German-language authors of the twentieth century. In this vivid and eloquent biography, Zweig largely eschews the traditional academic discourse on the philosopher's work, instead concentrating entirely on Nietzsche as a person, his habits, his passions and his obsessions. Stefan Zweig describes the tragedy of Nietzsche's existence, his seclusion from the world, in self-imposed isolation, in a compelling and impressive way.
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Stunning
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Pretty Good...
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Garry Kasparov's 1997 chess match against the IBM supercomputer Deep Blue was a watershed moment in the history of technology. It was the dawn of a new era in artificial intelligence: A machine capable of beating the reigning human champion at this most cerebral game. That moment was more than a century in the making, and in this breakthrough audiobook, Kasparov reveals his astonishing side of the story for the first time. He describes how it felt to strategize against an implacable, untiring opponent with the whole world watching.
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This is a Chess Book
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Chess is the ultimate turn-based strategy game. For centuries, it has honed the decision-making skills of kings and the strategic thinking of generals. Modern studies show that chess promotes brain development at any age, prevents Alzheimer's, and trains both sides of the brain to work in synergy. And today, learning chess is easier than you think!
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Little help in Getting Beginners to play chess
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What listeners say about The Royal Game
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Cat S.
- 02-17-21
Brief but wonderful
My brother recommended this book after I expressed my excitement for Queen's Gambit. While this has nothing to do with it, it is truly a remarkable little book. As I am furthermore interested in psychology, this book makes for a great little psychological case-study (even if it isn't a true story). But it is so well written and describes the mental health of being confined, which I think during the current pandemic lockdown can be refreshing to read and remind ourselves that it can get a lot worse than what it is now!
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4 people found this helpful
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Overall
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- Sandra Lorentzen
- 04-21-22
What a storyteller
Zweig puts the reader in the room. Masterful and gripping, whether you care about chess or not.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Brian Jason
- 10-24-21
The Audio is messed up
This is a great story and a fine reader. But the editor or producer is terrible. Maybe 40-50 words are cut off completely.
One issue with the reader: he pronounces “book” without a “k”
::shudder::
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- Patrick Zircher
- 06-10-24
Excellent
An arrogant savant meets his match in a man who was tortured by the Nazis.
This was superb. A classic among short stories and novellas like The Most Dangerous Game, Occurrence at Owl Creek, the Lottery, and so on.
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
- John K. Barbour
- 11-16-23
Good overall but not great.
Reasonably well paced and sufficiently captivating if a bit dry. The story is quite interesting for both the Chess enthusiast and the History buff given its time frame and narrative devices. As mentioned, the story telling can run to the dry side at times but not too badly and it is quite short anyway. The recording occasionally cuts off words, though only one here and there.
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