Viktor the Terrible

Viktor Korchnoi is the subject of a poignant new book from the distinguished pen of the Dutch grandmaster and former Soviet emigré Genna Sosonko. The title Evil Doer (published by Elk and Ruby) refers to the damnatio memoriae meted out by the USSR after Korchnoi’s very public defection to Amsterdam from the socialist paradise in 1976. Thereafter, Korchnoi combined the pursuit of a successful chess career, including two challenges for the world title, with the life of a persecuted traitor to the anointed heirs of Marx, Lenin and Stalin.
 
As a fellow ‘betrayer’ of the Soviet chess empire, Sosonko is well placed to chronicle the inner emotions, haunting fears and occasional huge triumphs of one of the most prominent personalities ever to defect. Although his book is a factual account, Sosonko has a prose style which puts him in the tradition of other literary giants who have depicted the internal workings of the chess mind and psyche in fiction.