25 must read books - XIX

Endgame

1972. Reykjavik. Capital of Iceland.

The capital city of Iceland was hosting the World championship chess match between Boris Spassky of Soviet Union and Bobby Fischer of US. The match symbolised the cold war between these two nations.

Bobby Fischer, at the age of 13, had defeated the United States champion Donald Byrne in a game which found fame as “the game of the century”. Fischer had deliberately sacrificed a queen to engineer an unstoppable march towards checkmate.

He became world champion at the age of 29, beating the Russian champion Boris Spassky.

His controversial life emerged thereafter.He became a recluse and, for the next 20 years, refused to play chess in public.

He reemerged in 1992, to break US sanctions against Yugoslavia by travelling there to play a $5 million rematch with Spassky, it was as a rabid anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. From that moment on, he faced 10 years in prison if ever he returned to the US. Almost a decade later he publicly rejoiced in the 9/11 attacks and the US authorities decided they had had enough. They revoked his passport. In 2004, following nine months’ imprisonment in Japan, Fischer was granted asylum in Iceland, scene of his 1972 triumph.

He grew ill with a urinary tract blockage, he refused to take any medicine. He died in 2008. In his last years from 1972 to 2008, Fischer was a very lonely person.

Fischer and the author of this book, Frank Brady, grew up together in New York. They played chess, dined and walked together. Brady had very close access to the lifestyle of Fischer and was at the best position to write this book.

 

Brady is objective, neither forgiving nor condemning but admitting, instead, that it is possible to admire and despise Fischer at the same time.

It is the most definitive biography of Bobby Fischer, the "Mozart of Chess"

Namaste

Prabir