by RonanBennett (Author)
Zugzwang: derived from the German, Zug (move) + Zwang (compulsion, obligation). In chess it is used to describe a position in which a player is reduced to a state of utter helplessness. He is obliged to move, but every move only makes his position even worse. St Petersburg, 1914: imposing and shabby, monumental and squalid, and - under its surface of frosty glamour - seething with plots and secret allegiances. On a blustery April day O.V. Gulko, a respected newspaper editor, is murdered in front of a shocked crowd. Five days later Dr Otto Spethmann, famous psychoanalyst, receives a visit from the police. There has been another murder in the city - and somehow he is implicated. He is mystified - and deeply worried, as much for his young, spirited daughter as for himself. He is preoccupied, too, by two new patients: Anna Petrovna, the society beauty plagued with nightmares with whom he is steadily and inappropriately falling in love, and troubled genius Rozental, the brilliant but mentally fragile chess master, due to play the most important competition of his life - the spectacular St Petersburg chess tournament - but on the verge of a complete breakdown. With the city rife with speculation and alarm, Spethmann broods over his own chessboard, its pieces frozen mid-battle, and contemplates the many forces - political, historical, sexual - that are holding him in their grasp
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 288
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: 03 Sep 2007
ISBN 10: 0747587116
ISBN 13: 9780747587118
Book Overview: A thriller for fans of Shadow of the Wind, The Interpretation of Murder and Restless Born of the weekly serialisation of the novel, as it was being written, in the Observer Ronan also now has a chess column in the Guardian
Prizes: Shortlisted for Hughes & Hughes Irish Novel of the Year Award 2008.