Chess Novels

Those who live in Ibiza must travel. To the mainland, to Europe. And sometimes chance takes the lead, as in these chess novellas: Vicente Valero sets off four times, to Italy and Denmark, to Zurich and Augsburg. Always in his luggage: the travel chess set inherited from an uncle. What begins carefree, with chess games and encounters with open outcomes, turns into a detective search for places where the life paths of five European spirits intersect: Brecht and Benjamin at the chessboard in Svendborg in the summer of 1934, Nietzsche just before his mental breakdown in Turin, Kafka at the notorious reading in Munich in 1916, in the midst of World War I, and finally Rilke, who in 1921 in Berg am Irschel desperately tries to finish his magnum opus. Written with a light touch, this is a profound European book.