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Synopsis
At the opening of this amazing fiction, a cadaver is discovered, the body of a wealthy businessman from Vienna, apparently a suicide without plausible motivation. Next to the body is a chessboard made of rags with buttons for pieces whose positions on the board may hold the only clue. As the plot of this passionately colored, coolly controlled thriller unfolds, we meet two chess players--one a clever, persecuted Jew, the other a ruthless, persecuting German--who have faced each other many times before and played for stakes that are nothing less than life itself.
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Review
A man is found shot in his garden, in a village not far from Vienna. Unable to be defined as either a suicide or a homicide, the death is called one of "mysterious circumstances." The garden--unlike the prominent citizen's life--is highly unusual, a "concentric maze of ten-foot-high hedges leading to a chessboard-shaped clearing paved with squares of white and black marble." Frisch, the murdered man, was obsessed with chess, and the novel's chilling first sentence--"They say that chess was born in bloodshed"--bears this out.
In this first novel, Paolo Maurensig coolly executes the ultimate drama of manipulation--life as a game of chess. On this armature, he hangs a tale of vengeance set against a backdrop of historic villainy, Nazi against Jew. The two chess players are as black and white as can be--a persecuted Jew and a ruthless, persecuting German who first "duel" over a chessboard in an international tournament, and then in a concentration camp. The narrative is a meticulous reconstruction of the moments and background events that led to Frisch's death. Ingeniously referring everything back to the machinations and executions of movements in a chess game, life itself is at stake as the inescapable sins of the past catch up with the chess-obsessed characters.
About the Author
Paolo Maurensig was born in Italy in 1943. He has held a variety of occupations, most recently a restorer of antique musical instruments.
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- PublisherHolt Paperbacks
- Publication date1998
- ISBN 10 0805060286
- ISBN 13 9780805060287
- BindingPaperback
- Edition number1
- Number of pages144
- Rating
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