Monday, January 09, 2006

Zugzwang, a Serial Chess Novel

The Guardian's Observer Review has begun a serial chess novel by Ronan Bennett titled Zugzwang, with the first two chapters yesterday. It is a murder mystery set in St. Petersburg in 1914 during the great tournament of that year, which featured Lasker and Capablanca. You can find the Crosstable of St. Petersburg 1914 at Storia Scacchi. You will notice that no Rozental played in the event, though Bennett's story says "he is the favorite" -- an unfortunate use of creative license IMHO. For those interested in the real tournament, you can download a zipped PGN file of all games from the Pitt Archive or download a PGN file of 25 lightly annotated games from the event from the Supertournaments webpage. The tournament book is available from USCF Sales. Kasparov discusses the Lasker-Rubinstein encounter in volume 1 of My Great Predecessors and offered a follow-up at ChessBase on that analysis. Hat tip to The Closet Grandmaster.

1 comment:

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