Chess Game Related
Chess Game Related
Chess Game Related
restorer who sets out to solve the riddle of a 15th-century painting (showing the Duke of Flanders
and his Knight playing a game of chess), but instead comes across one murder after another (over
a 5 century period).
HE FLANDERS PANEL by Arturo Perez-Reverte (Bantam Books, 1996) - A thriller thats about an art
restorer who sets out to solve the riddle of a 15th-century painting (showing the Duke of Flanders
and his Knight playing a game of chess), but instead comes across one murder after another (over
a 5 century period).
THE EIGHT by Katherine Neville (Ballantine Books, 1990) - Another thriller/fantasy-adventure that
became an international bestseller. Its about a computer expert (who loves chess) who gets
caught up in a search for a legendary chess set once owned by Charlemagne.
THE FIRE by Katherine Neville (2008) - A sequel to THE EIGHT, which begins twenty years after the
first novel ended. Lord Byron is somehow tossed into the mix too!
ZUGZWANG by Ronan Bennett (2007) - A historical thriller about a city hosting an international
chess tournament in 1914. Murders and other forms of chaos follow.
TOWER STRUCK BY LIGHTENING by Fernando Arrabal (Penguin, 1991) - Andorran Spaniard vs. a
Swiss physicist (who happens to be a Marxist terrorist) in a battle for the chess championship of
the world.
THE LUNEBURG VARIATION by Paolo Maurensig (Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1993) - Chess (as metaphor
for war), concentration camp, Nazis, and lots of mystery. A highly acclaimed piece of work.
THE DEFENSE by Vladimir Nabokov (Originally published in 1930) More recently titled: THE LUZHIN
DEFENSE (in 2000, a major movie, starring John Turturro, appeared that was based on this) - This
is a story about high level chess and insanity, and how both are often part of the same "package". I
read this in my teens and really enjoyed it, but I'm not so sure that I'd like it as much now.
THE ROYAL GAME (A Novella, the original German title was: Schachnovelle) by Stefan Zweig (1942)
- A man who is imprisoned and put into isolation is driven to the edge of mental/emotional
collapse. The only thing that allows him to avoid total madness is a small chess book he steals that
is filled with master games.
I loved this story when I read it in my teens, and I still love it today. In 1960, this tale was turned
into an excellent (German) movie titled, BRAINWASHED directed by Gerd Oswald (starring
Curt Jurgens & Claire Bloom). Youre not a real chess player if you havent read THE ROYAL
GAME. Rest assured that after reading it, youll instantly gain 300 rating points (or, at the very
least, you'll insist you're 300 points stronger than your published rating), and beautiful women will
find you irresistible.
THE YIDDISH POLICEMENS UNION by Michael Chabon (HarperCollins, 2007) - An acclaimed novel
that prominently features chess, Jews, and murder, which poses the question: What if, as Franklin
Roosevelt once proposed, Alaska - and not Israel - had become the homeland for the Jews after
World War II?
THE CHESS GARDEN by Brooks Hansen (Riverhead Trade, 1996) - A man serving in a British-run
concentration camp for forcibly displaced Boers sends 12 letters to his wife. The letters describe a
world where chess pieces live and die, fight and love, and even philosophize.
SHADOW WITHOUT A NAME by Ignacio Padilla (Spanish: 2000, English translation: 2002) - Two chess
experts make a deal during WWII: If my father won, the other man would take his place on the
eastern front and hand over his job as pointsman in hut nine on the Munich-Salzburg line. If, on
the other hand, my father lost, he would shoot himself before the train reached its destination.
CHESSMEN OF MARS by Edgar Rice Burroughs (1922) - The Chessmen of Mars, first published in
1922, is the fifth book in Burroughs Mars series, about the adventures of Earthman John Carter on
the Red Planet.
DISCWORLD by Terry Pratchett. This features a chess variant called Stealth Chess. Thirty-eight
Discworld novels have been published since 1983!
THE CHESS MACHINE by Robert Lohr (2007) - About a chess playing automaton (sounds like The
Turk, doesnt it?) in 1770 Hungary. Throw in a chess prodigy and a dwarf, add a dash of murder,
and you have a story.
ALL THE KINGS HORSES by Kurt Vonnegut (Short Story, 1951) - Features a true game of death
where a prisoner (and his family and companions) is forced to play his Chinese captor for his/their
freedom. The problem: these people act as actual pieces, and every American piece thats
captured will be immediately executed. Imagine the moral dilemma that this would create!
FROM RUSSIA, WITH LOVE by Ian Fleming (1957) - A novel in the James Bond series. One of the
villains, Tov Kronsteen, is a chess grandmaster.
INVISIBLE CITIES by Italo Calvino (1972) - An experimental novel that has no actual plot and very
little character development! The novel is structured as a dialogue between Marco Polo and Kublai
Khan.
THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin (1978). For young readers. A murder mystery that won the
1979 Newbery Medal (probably the highest award one can win for childrens literature).
THE BISHOP MURDER CASE by S. S. van Dine a pseudonym for Willard Huntington Wright (1928)
- A Philo Vance mystery (there were six Philo Vance novels in all). They also made several Philo
Vance movies. The one I saw was The Kennel Murder Case (1933), which starred William Powell
(my favorite actor in other words, I really enjoyed the movie!).
UNSOUND VARIATIONS (a novella included in the book, PORTRAITS OF HIS CHILDREN) by George
R.R. Martin (1982) - A single move in a chess tournament that one of the weaker players made
ruins the lives of the rest of the team in ways both disturbing and unimaginable.
If you ever worried that a chess blunder might have dire consequences, then this might turn your
fear into full-blown paranoia! In any case, UNSOUND VARIATIONS won several prestigious writing
awards, and the author is an acknowledged fiction/fantasy/horror heavyweight. This one is surely
worth a look!
THE BIG SLEEP by Raymond Chandler (1939) - This classic speaks for itself.
OTHER CHESS RELATED NOVELS
(Great or not so great, you be the judge)
FORBIDDEN PLANET by Lionel Fanthorpe (using the pseudonym John E. Muller) (1961) - About an
interstellar chess game played by superhuman entities using humans as pawns.
THE DRAGON VARIATION by Anthony Glyn (Hutchinson, 1969) - About the world of international
chess. Got very good reviews at the time, but I wasnt too fond of it when I read the thing in 1971.
My main gripe was that the authors understanding of the game was severely lacking, which made
some of the chess battles a tad embarrassing. Perhaps Id feel differently if I read it again.
TACTICS OF CONQUEST by Barry Malzberg (Penguin Putnam) - A very highly thought of author (and
playwright, and musician!), but I dont know anything about this particular book!
MASTER PRIM by James Whitfield Ellison (1968) - Features a Fischer-like character and even a full
game that, in the novel, was between Prim and Eugene Berlin, but in reality it was Alekhine vs.
Sterk, Budapest 1921. I discovered the games true identity on Edward Winters very interesting
site, Chess Notes: http://www.chesshistory.com/
THE 64-SQUARE LOOKING GLASS: GREAT GAMES OF CHESS IN WORLD LITERATURE by Burt Hochberg
(Times Books, 1993) - Forty-four entries that examine the great game of chess in world
literature. They range from mysteries to poetry, tournament accounts to fantasy contests,
allegory to journalism.
KING, QUEEN, AND KNIGHT: A CHESS ANTHOLOGY IN PROSE AND VERSE by Normal Knight and Will
Guy (Batsford, 1975) - An anthology of over 250 passages of prose and verse, culled from many
different countries and centuries.
CELESTIAL CHESS by Thomas Bontly (Ballantine Books, 1980) - A mystery novel about a medieval
manuscript, a strange poem written by a monk during the reign of Henry II, and murder.
SINISTER GAMBITS: CHESS STORIES OF MURDER AND MYSTERY by Richard Peyton (Souvenir Press,
1992) - A compilation of 17 short stories bearing chess-related themes, divided into three sections.
There is some heavy-duty stuff here from Fritz Leiber to J. G. Ballard to Poul Anderson. We even
get Agatha Christie!
ALEKHINES ANGUISH: A Novel of the Chess World by Charles D. Yaffe (McFarland & Company, 1999)
- This is a fictionalized account of the life and career of world chess champion Alexander Alekhine.
LOS VORACES, 2019: A Chess Novel by Andy Soltis (McFarland, 2003) - About a twenty million dollar
tournament in 2019. The rules: no seconds, no agents, no computers, no entourages, no pagers,
no power palms, no phone calls no outside contact of any kind as the fourteen greatest chess
players in the world gather to compete for money and fame.
UNDER THE BLACK SUN by Eric Woro (Axiom Publishing, 1995) - Vampires, a chess prodigy, sex,
dead bodies strewn about like graffiti, a psychotic dead man, and perversions galore. From the
book: Martin tells her that Golem never made it with a girl, to which she replies, putting her
hand on his leg, Well, Ive never made it with a ghoul.
CHESS WITH A DRAGON by David Gerrold (1987) - Mankind has to negotiate with an alien race
called Dragons.
GRANDMASTER by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy (1984) - An old story: two chess prodigies
meet. They grow up to be chess powerhouses. And then they face spies, assassins, mystic stuff in
the Far East, murder, and evil! I recently shared a couple of beers with Seirawan in Amsterdam
and he told me how he experienced this exact kind of thing (I wasn't surprised, because I have to
fight evil and ninjas on a daily basis too)! In other words, its business as usual for us chess pros.
THE TWELVE CHAIRS (1928) by IIf and Petrov - Parts of it take place at a chess club.
INCIDENT AT THE SICILIAN DRAGON by Kent Smith (1981) - I remember seeing this book on the floor
at the headquarters of the Players Chess News in LA (I was editor to that international chess paper
at that time). I should have picked the book up, but instead I stepped on it and continued to my
desk. I still have no idea what its about (it might have been the chess equivalent of WAR AND
PEACE for all I know).
HENCE by Brad Leithauser (Penguin, 1989) - A chess genius, the worlds strongest chess computer,
a big tournament at MIT, a messianic computer scientist in green shoes, and a bleeding
televangelist. What more could anyone want?
MORAL VICTORIES by David Lovejoy (Echo Publications, 2008) - A historical novel, meaning the
author tries to follow real history, but creates thoughts and dialogue that may or may not have
had anything to do with the real person. In this case our hero is Savielly Tartakower, a famous
grandmaster who was also one of the wittiest guys who ever lived (by the way, Tartakower has a
tremendous set of books about his best games a must buy, if you can find them). The novel
sounds interesting.
THE CHESS PLAYER by Rolf Witzsche (2005) - A Russian chess champion is rescued from a mob that
is obsessed on revenge for a nuclear war tragedy. The Chess Player is a chapter from the novel,
BRIGHTER THAN THE SUN.
THE CHESS TEAM by James Sawaski (2005) - A book for young readers. If you guessed that the book
was about the main character blundering in the High School Chess Championship, you would have
guessed right. I think its a triumph of the human spirit kind of thing. Not my cup of tea, but
then Im a bad tempered old man and have given up on the human spirit long, long ago.
THE POSTHUMAN DADA GUIDE: Tzara and Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu (2009) - Quite a
title! The blurb says: The Posthuman Dada Guide is an impractical handbook for practical living in
our posthuman world all by way of examining the imagined 1916 chess game between Tristan
Tzara, the daddy of Dada, and V. I. Lenin, the daddy of communism. Wow.
EVEN DEAD MEN PLAY CHESS by Michael Weitz (Lachesis Publishing, 2009) - A mystery. Ray Gordon
is a chess teacher who finds his student dead in his shop. Ray thinks it is murder, the police dont
agree. And off to the races we go.
THE MAGIC MEAN MACHINE by Beatrice Gormley (2010) - A book for children. It's about a little girl
trying to win a 5th grade chess tournament. Since she often succumbs to nerves, Marvin the
science wiz invents a device (a rewired Walkman) that will stimulate Alisons hypothalamus. Allow
me to pose a question: Is that legal?
TROTTERS BOTTOM by Tanya Jones (2010) - A thriller. A woman is returning from maternity leave
and is accosted by a Russian chess grandmaster (as Ive always said, you cant trust those Russian
grandmasters). Naturally, theft and murder is the logical next step. Oh, did I forget to say that
this is a comedy? (The title alone made me laugh Im still laughing).
THE CHESS PLAYER (Polish Title: SZACHISTA) by Waldemar Lysiak (1980) - Centered around the
game of chess between Napoleon Bonaparte and The Turk.
LORD LOSS by Darren Shan (2005)- A 10 book series for children. The main character, Grubbs
Grady, lives in a family of chess players.
STRIDING FOLLY by Dorothy L. Sayers (1939) - Supposed to have chess in it, but Im not sure how
much.