A game in a cell

Stefan Zweig's novella The Royal Game (Schachnovelle) was finished shortly before his death in 1942. A prisoner held in isolation steals a book of famous games and plays them in his head, then against himself, until the game becomes a kind of illness.

Zweig uses chess to show a mind with nothing else to hold on to. Years later the prisoner, crossing the ocean by ship, plays the world champion.