Ronan Bennett & Daniel King on chess: Jansa-Rublevsky, Ostrava 1992. Chess has long been used as a metaphor in literature. Here are two of the best examples. Click on the arrows to see the final move
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Ronan Bennett, Daniel King
The Guardian
, Friday 17 July 2009
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Jansa-Rublevsky, Ostrava 1992. White to play and draw.
DK Many novels feature chess: a game can be a metaphor for almost any situation in life, but most clearly for a struggle between good and evil. That's certainly the case with the two books I'm recommending here, both set during the second world war.
Stefan Zweig's Schachnovelle, usually translated into English – with some irony – as The Royal Game, is rich with ideas. On a cruise ship bound for South America, a wealthy passenger challenges the world chess champion – in the middle of an exhibition tour – to a game. The champion gets more than he bargained for when an enigmatic kibitzer intervenes for the challenger. Schachnovelle is a tense psychological drama with excellent characterisation. Czentovic, the young world champion, is an idiot savant in a fashionable suit with airs and graces but few manners and no formal education. With prescience, Zweig has come close to describing Bobby Fischer – as well as several modern-day chess professionals. Zweig's prose style in the original German is lucid. The same cannot be said for the first English translation I bought. Make sure you get the Penguin Red edition entitled Chess: a Novella, translated by Anthea Bell.
Stalemate by Icchokas Meras, set in a Jewish ghetto in Lithuania during the holocaust, is no less gripping. The language is poetic, spare and sometimes biblical in tone, and that's fitting for a story in which Abraham Lipman, one of the elders of the Jewish community, is forced to offer the life of his son Isaac as part of a horrific deal. The Nazi commander, Schoger, challenges Isaac to a game of chess. If Schoger wins, Isaac's life will be spared, but the children in the ghetto will be taken to a concentration camp. If Isaac wins, he will be killed, but the children will be spared. The story speaks of cruelty, courage, dignity and hope, and is beautifully told. Stalemate is published in the US by Other Press and I ordered my copy online.
In the diagram White's position looks desperate – his remaining kingside pawn is about to fall when Black's two passed pawns, supported by the king, will win easily. But there is a miraculous defence: 1 Ra2. Black's rook must capture and the White king is stalemated.
chess@guardian.co.uk