nampahceitac's review
4.0
If anyone enjoyed [b:The Queen's Gambit|62022|The Queen's Gambit|Walter Tevis|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388265750l/62022._SY75_.jpg|522779], or is currently in a reading-about-enigmatic-personalities-of-chess mood, then this book is perfect.
Starting with a journalists last-resort quest to find a cloistered former chess master--a fictitious portrayal of the very real Malik Mir Sultan Khan--Maurensig recounts the story of a young boy growing up in an impossibly accelerating world, from the turn of the twentieth century as an elephant stable boy in colonial Punjab, to his adoption into the service of a Sultan, development of his gifts in chaturanga and eventual training to become a European master--to his sudden adulthood and the circumstances which clouded his reputation.
I can't say with certainty just exactly what it is about Paolo Maurensig's way of storytelling; in which one first person narrative, nested inside the other, is always bookended by a scribe or journalist or secondary recorder of events (as in [b:A Devil Comes to Town|42394964|A Devil Comes to Town|Paolo Maurensig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1539980837l/42394964._SY75_.jpg|59777467]... but it's good. And makes for a curious, almost timeless (or rather, time-exempt) kind of story.
Personal note: ALSO! there were so many allusions to Malik saying "I wasn't the most attractive man by any means" but um... I looked at the wikipedia page and either he actually was really humble in real life and Maurensig is trying to play that up in text or Maurensig was sorely mistaken because:
Yet another Chess master for me to find attractive in 2021. And for what. I can't handle this
Thank you to World Editions for an ARC, furnished to me by my place of work, Oxford Exchange Bookstore in Tampa, Florida.
Starting with a journalists last-resort quest to find a cloistered former chess master--a fictitious portrayal of the very real Malik Mir Sultan Khan--Maurensig recounts the story of a young boy growing up in an impossibly accelerating world, from the turn of the twentieth century as an elephant stable boy in colonial Punjab, to his adoption into the service of a Sultan, development of his gifts in chaturanga and eventual training to become a European master--to his sudden adulthood and the circumstances which clouded his reputation.
I can't say with certainty just exactly what it is about Paolo Maurensig's way of storytelling; in which one first person narrative, nested inside the other, is always bookended by a scribe or journalist or secondary recorder of events (as in [b:A Devil Comes to Town|42394964|A Devil Comes to Town|Paolo Maurensig|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1539980837l/42394964._SY75_.jpg|59777467]... but it's good. And makes for a curious, almost timeless (or rather, time-exempt) kind of story.
Personal note: ALSO! there were so many allusions to Malik saying "I wasn't the most attractive man by any means" but um... I looked at the wikipedia page and either he actually was really humble in real life and Maurensig is trying to play that up in text or Maurensig was sorely mistaken because:
Yet another Chess master for me to find attractive in 2021. And for what. I can't handle this
Thank you to World Editions for an ARC, furnished to me by my place of work, Oxford Exchange Bookstore in Tampa, Florida.
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