Half measures

Would you slice a book in two? I learned of this peculiar practice in January, and I can’t fault its brutal pragmatism. Undeniably, half of War and Peace is more portable than the whole thing, and perhaps even less intimidating. When you finish the first chunk, you just swap it for the second. Books want to be read, not fetishised. For all that, I recoil from the idea, and I’m not alone.

The Candidates tournament in Yekaterinburg, a 14-round epic, was put on hold after just seven, but not due to illness among the players. When the Russian government announced that international air traffic would be suspended indefinitely, Fide’s president Arkady Dvorkovich, a former deputy prime minister of Russia, halted the event while there was still time for the players, their seconds, arbiters, organisers and journalists to get back home.

Two weeks ago, I wrote that ‘if anybody does become ill, it is hard to imagine how the tournament could be fairly concluded’.