27 August 2010
Hello Everyone,
Here’s something to read over the weekend apart from all those variations: The 64-Square Looking Glass: Great Games of Chess in World Literature.
The writer, Burt Hochberg (1933–May 13, 2006) authored and edited several books on chess, and served as editor of both Chess Life (from December 1966 until October 1979 inclusive), and GAMES magazine. Hochberg has been the longest-serving editor in the history of Chess Life magazine.
Hochberg was the main publishing and advisory force behind the RHM Publishing chess project in the 1970s, which produced many high-quality titles from several of the world’s top players.
This anthology includes 44 pieces grouped together in several sections covering poetry, prose, fantasy, allegory to journalism and more.
The first section includes ‘Chess Itself’ – an essay by Charles Krauthammer. The ‘
Only a Pawn’ in section 3 includes Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen match! Then, there is A. L. Taylor’s essay ‘The White Knight’. You can also enjoy the flavour of Borges’ poetic analogy of dreamers and Ian Fleming’s ‘From Russia With Love’ chess motif.
There is also the Poul Anderson’s story of the ‘The Immortal Game’ of 1851 played by robot simulators!
Part Four introduces ‘Players Real & Imagined’. Elias Canetti – as Hochberg writes – “astounding coincidence” of a fictional player named Fischer – in his 1935 novel ‘Auto-da-Fé’.
There’s also a whodunit, murder mystery and romance packed into the book as well.
We found a very nice detailed review of the book here.
From Alexandra Kosteniuk’s
Also see her personal blog at
