The Queen's Gambit

Romanen bak Netflix-TV-serien som ble en kjempesuksess og stor PR for sjakk i mange land i løpet av høsten 2020.

Engaging and fast-paced, this gripping coming-of-age novel of chess, feminism, and addiction speeds to a conclusion as elegant and satisfying as a mate in four. Now an acclaimed Netflix series.

Eight year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is, until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she’s competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as Beth hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and the thought of escape becomes all the more tempting.

A modern classic about a troubled chess prodigy and her battle to survive --- a coming of age story of feminism, chess and addiction

The Queen’s Gambit “phenomenon” becomes most popular limited series ever on Netflix.

Wikipedia skriver:

The Queen's Gambit is a 1983 American novel by Walter Tevis, exploring the life of a female chess prodigy. A bildungsroman, or coming-of-age story, it covers themes of adoption, feminism, chess, drug addiction and alcoholism. The book was adapted for the 2020 Netflix miniseries of the same name.

In a New York Times interview published at the time of his book's release, Tevis stated the story is "a tribute to brainy women." In an interview with its director Scott Frank at the time of the television miniseries' release, Bruce Pandolfini revealed that Walter Tevis never had any intention to reference Bobby Fischer, the American young chess prodigy many commentators speculated was the obvious inspiration for his protagonist, who had won the World Chess Championship a decade earlier.

Tevis based the chess scenes on his own experience as a "class C" player and on his long study of the game. He elaborates on this in the Author's Note for the novel.