The Knight of New Orleans: The Pride and the Sorrow of Paul Morphy - Softcover

Fullerty, Matt

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1937056015 ISBN 13: 9781937056018

Publisher: Dionysus Books, 2015

Synopsis

1837. Paul Morphy was born into a wealthy Creole family in the French Quarter of New Orleans and became infamous for his fast and positional chess game. At twenty-one he was knighted world champion after defeating the great European masters-the English and Germans-in New York at the First American Chess Congress. In a short-lived blaze of glory, he defeated opponents in an atmosphere that encouraged gambling, drinking and often led to duels for honour. Soon no one dared play the boy from New Orleans-he even offered Pawn and Move to the world!
As a young gentleman, Paul embarked on a Grand Tour of Paris and London with his manager-servant, Fred Edge. Part proud spectacle and part reluctant circus act, Paul performed feats of memory and blindfold chess, making records that stand today. He even played Emperor Napoleon III (at croquet and chess) and was praised by Queen Victoria. He returned to New Orleans lionized by high society, but misunderstood....
Morphy was in love with the lights down on Basin Street. Returning home, he developed an obsession for 'crib-girl' Clara Young, a professional working girl from an area off Basin Street known as 'The Swamp.' Clara needed money and excitement. Living in a dangerous world of brothels and barrelhouses, is she just playing with Paul for her ticket out? Who is the social misfit, the chess boy or the trick girl? Who is playing whom? Based on a true story, The Knight of New Orleans shows you all the honest and brutal moves in a gamble of love and survival. Let the best player win!
Paul Morphy is today remembered as the pride and sorrow of chess. After conquering the chess world so young, he became a recluse, a failed lawyer and sanitarium patient, a dark twist on the American Dream. Paul was a strict amateur playing for honour, Clara a professional working for survival. Was Clara's world too different from Paul's, his background too bourgeois, hers too dangerous? Or will love triumph even when the pieces are checkmate? The Mississippi and the Vieux Carré are calling.... Let the games begin!

About this title

From the Author:

Matt Fullerty writes novels about chess, crime and conmen, namely a chess prodigy, a murderess and an art forger. Author of novels The Knight of New Orleans, The Murderess and the Hangman and American Con Artist. He also teaches in the Police Science B.A. at George Washington University in Washington, DC.

For the real life crime behind The Murderess and the Hangman, see Matt's interview as a 'talking head' on the TV show Deadly Women (video at mattfullerty.com).

From the Back Cover:

"What made Matt Fullerty's writing stand out, from the very first sentence, was an unusually strong and individual way with words. Taking us into the vanished world of old America and Europe he uses a highly textured language to give an almost physical experience of being in that place and time. Drawing subtle lines between a society top-heavy with leisure and the profligate genius it produced in Morphy, he holds back the historical and personal reckoning while letting it gather and brood like the storm that finally washes away New Orleans. In my view this makes The Knight of New Orleans a stand-out all rounder in the craft of literary fiction."
     --Geoff Cush, author of God Help the Queen and Son of France

"From the facts of Morphy's life, novelist Matt Fullerty has imagined a rich and speculative tale. The Knight of New Orleans enters the psyche of a sensitive young artist developing his gift amidst judges and gin runners, generals and call girls. Even the pirate Jean Lafitte (himself a study in the tension between fame and honour) makes an appearance of sorts. Morphy's ascent was meteoric; his downfall was appalling and total. Yet, he will be remembered for as long as chess is played. All of which makes it hard to place him with regard to another of Schopenhauer's pronouncements: "The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming." The Knight of New Orleans takes that fame in new and unexpected directions."
     --Macon Shibut, Three-Time Virginia State Chess Champion (1993, 1999, 2002)

About this edition

• Publisher: Dionysus Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1937056015
• ISBN 13: 9781937056018
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 588