Theory of Shadows

October 9, 2017
Italian novelist Maurensig (The Luneberg Variation) returns to the subject of chess for this novel about real-life world champion Alexsander Alekhine, who was born in Moscow and died in March 1946 in Estoril, Portugal, under mysterious circumstances. A brief prologue describes the novelist-narrator’s 2012 visit to Estoril to investigate the cause of Alekhine’s death—reported at different times as heart attack, choking on a piece of meat, suicide, or homicide. The main narrative explores Alekhine’s state of mind during his last days, during which, pressed for money and uncertain he can defend his title against a new generation of chess players, he prepares for an upcoming match by studying his opponent’s previous games, walking on the beach, and consuming alcohol. Along the way, a Jewish violinist provides music and friendship, despite the fact that while living under Nazi protection Alekhine published anti-Semitic articles (which he later disavowed), and a journalist prompts Alekhine to recall his first tournament victory in at age 16, four failed marriages, and playing against opponents including Grandmaster Capablanca, Trotsky, and Reischminister Hans Frank. When Alekhine receives an envelope containing photographs of his former friends standing among the accused at the Nuremberg trials, he believes someone plans to kill him, but he focuses on what he cares about most: keeping his title. Maurensig evokes a world of betrayal, personal and pervasive throughout Europe, from António de Oliveira Salazar’s secret police to Stalin’s Soviet Union. His epilogue offers several theories about Alekhine’s death and suggests an ingenious explanation. Maurensig’s novel is enjoyable for grandmasters and novices alike.

November 1, 2017
Furst meets Nabokov: an atmospheric blend of historical fact and detective-tale speculation against the backdrop of international chess.First published in 2015 in Italy, this story is of a piece with Maurensig's debut, The Luneburg Variation (1993), in which Nazism meets the game of kings, with events reverberating long after the end of World War II. The story centers on Alexandre Alekhine, a Russian chess master whose antipathy toward Bolshevism led him to cast his lot with the Nazis. To what extent is a matter of much back and forth here, but Alekhine does not protest overmuch when Josef Goebbels, on playing a game with him, calls him a "friend of the Reich." Ah, but then, Alekhine uses a defense in his game that owed to a Jewish predecessor, thinking it a fine irony that "right under the eyes of Reichsminister Goebbels, a Jew should poke his head out, grinning irreverently and making fun of them all." Alekhine's story unfolds through the eyes of a curious investigator, Venezuelan by birth, Italian by nationality, Portuguese by descent, a student of chess who considers Alekhine "a tutelary deity" but blanches at his awful anti-Semitism. More than 60 years after the fact, he travels to Portugal, where Alekhine had found himself marooned after the war, to look into the grandmaster's death. Was he, as investigators held, the victim of accidentally choking on food? Passing himself off as a journalist, the protagonist finds other possibilities, including a carefully developed plotline that places Alekhine against the backdrop of the newly emerging Cold War and a vengeful Joseph Stalin. For Alekhine, even facing that fateful last supper of beef stroganoff, the game extends beyond the chessboard, a matter of cat and mouse to the end: "Deny, always deny, even in the face of the most glaring evidence." Maurensig could just as easily have written this as a work of nonfiction save that his narrative frame allows him to play freely with alternative theories.A pleasure for fans of literary mystery--and of chess as well.

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December 1, 2017

"You cannot write a story centered on a crime without unmasking the killer," laments the putative author, who explains that he is writing a novel so that he can revisit the mysterious death of world chess champion Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Alekhin in steamy 1946 Estoril, Portugal. Born in Moscow but traveling on a French passport, Alekhin has been alternately accused of being a Soviet spy, a Nazi collaborator, and a British double agent. Everyone agrees that he is arrogant, even "the sadist of the chess world." When he's found sitting in front of a chessboard in his hotel room with his overcoat on and a plate of meat by his side, his death is quickly ruled accidental (from choking on the meat), though there's no end to the enemies who might have relished knocking him off. As the novelist investigates, tracking down the surviving and now quite elderly players in the drama (from a waiter to the doctor who certified Alekhin's death), a portrait emerges of World War II intrigue; a brilliant, unsettling man; and the way the creative act and a murder investigation become parallel. That the killer isn't entirely unmasked only adds to the frisson. VERDICT A classic intellectual thriller, well conceived and executed.

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2017
In this slim yet complex novel, Maurensig returns to themes familiar from his debut, The Luneburg Variation (1997): fascism and chess. In 1946, world chess champion Alexander Alekhine was found dead in his hotel room in Portugal, the official cause listed as choking on his dinner. The scene screamed cover-up, and Alekhine's life provided a bevy of murder motivations. He was accused of anti-Semitism and Nazi collaboration and had spoken openly against the Bolsheviks of his native Russia, and the stakes were high for retaking his title of world chess champion. Maurensig builds an intriguing characterization upon these facts; Alekhine, like many great intellects, is both fascinating and maddening in his single-minded obsession that excludes most human feeling. Chess is presented as an art, not a game; monologues by Alekhine about chess are rendered in-depth, but in terms nonexperts can grasp. Through poetic, introspective prose and multiple flashbacks, Alekhine's life is elucidated, a love song to the art of chess is sung, and dramatic tension is maintained until the final resolution of the question of who killed Alekhine and why.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)