CIPC #84: Chess in literature
So far, I have only talked about books in the 15th instalment of the Chess in Popular Culture series, where I discussed a bunch of covers featuring chess. But it is famously impossible, or at least inadvisable, to judge a book by its cover and indeed many books with a chess inspired cover barely mention it while on the other hand many books are published in which chess is a major theme without board or pieces on the front. This time, we’ll focus on what’s in the book. As you are, of course, all connoisseurs of everything CIPC, there is no point in mentioning Arthur Conan Doyle’s scheming minds or Charles Dickens’ chess nuts. There is also no point in spotlighting books which are about chess, because then I’d have to talk about pretty much every scene, which is exhaustive for both you and me. So here’s what I’ll focus on: books in which chess is mentioned in one or two particular places in a more or less offhand fashion. Since this still leaves me with too large a scope to be exhaustive, I’ll just restrict myself to some books close at hand.
