The Rise and Fall of David Bronstein

En biografi, men ingen vanlig biografi om den store David Bronstein (1924-2006), mer en biografisk samtalebok om opplevelser i sjakkens verden, og livet. Sosonko skriver glimrende og lærte Bronstein godt å kjenne. Forordet har Garri Kasparov skrevet. Ingen sjakkpartier i boka.

En høyst interessant bok om en av de store spillerne i Sovjetsjakken, og også hvordan han hadde det på eldre dager. Bronstein var en av de mest kreative stormesterne og engasjert til det siste. Han viser blant annet sin pessimisme om sjakkens utvikling til dels "ren poengplukking" i kommentarer som denne til Sosonko: "Chess isn't worth being written about the way you write about it. ... For example, you said that the tournament in Spain was strong. You say that strong grandmasters played there. But what does strong mean, exactly? It used to be the case that chessplayers were interesting or uninteresting. But now they are all strong. Now someone who has graduated from high school is a strong mathematician."

Forlagets egen omtale:

First published in Russian in 2014 and written by Genna Sosonko – widely recognized as the number one writer on the history of Soviet chess – this is a truly unique book about the life and destiny of the great chess player David Bronstein (1924-2006).

Emerging from a challenging background – he narrowly escaped the holocaust in WWII, during which he starved, and his father spent seven years in a gulag – Bronstein faced Botvinnik in the world championship match in 1951 and nearly defeated him. But this ‘nearly’ inflicted a wound on David so deep that it would not heal for the rest of his life.

Sosonko knew Bronstein well. Their conversations – many of which have made it into this book – not only portray the thoughts and character of one of history’s most original grandmasters but also take us back to a time unlike any other in world history. This is not a biography in the traditional sense of the word. Rather, Sosonko’s fascinating book asks eternal questions which don’t have neat and simple answers.

With a foreword to the English edition by Garry Kasparov.