Zugzwang
by Ronan Bennett
Zugzwang, from the German Zug (move) and Zwang (obligation), is a term used in chess when the player whose turn it is to move has no move that does not worsen his position. It is not merely a bad position, but the state of being obliged to move when no move at all would be preferable. Ronan Bennett, who co-writes an enjoyable chess column for the Observer, has used the concept as a starting point for his fifth novel. It’s a thriller set in St Petersburg in 1914 on the eve of an international chess tournament (when such things were still glamorous affairs); the hero and narrator, Dr Otto Spethmann, is a psychoanalyst who finds himself caught up in a complex political plot in which the police, the Bolsheviks, the Okhrana (the Tsarist secret police) and a notorious Polish terrorist are all involved.
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