Product Details

World chess champion Alexander Alekhine has been called the "Grandmaster of Chess," perhaps an apt moniker considering the drunken binges, the fits of depression, the scandalous affairs, the marriages of convenience to women much older than he, the painful compromises of his life. Alekhine had only one real ambition - to be chess champion of the world - and that he was, when he choked to death on a piece of meat while crouched alone over a chess board in a hotel room in Estoril, Portugal, in 1946.

This is a fictionalized account of Alekhine's extraordinary life and career, based on the actual people and events in his triumphant career adn troubled life. What emerges is a brilliant but flawed human being, a member of Russian nobility who served in the Russian army, was sentenced to death by the Bolsheviks but saved by Lenin's intervention, was forced to collaborate with the Nazis, gained, lost and htne recaptured the world championship, three thimes broke the world blindfold cehss record, and once played 300 opponents simultaneously.

Author Charles D. Yaffe learned chess at the age of eight and has continued playing it for more than eighty years. he has written numerous technical, professional and historical works, but this is his first novel. He is a retired officer of the U.S. Public Health Service, having as an engineer worked on environmental health problems and occupational diseases. he lives in Berkeley, California.

Specifications

• 194 Pages
• Paperback
• Publisher: McFarland & Company
• Published: September, 1999