Can you suggest some good chess-themed fiction?

Question

I'm looking for some good books where chess plays a major part in the story. Some I've read already are:
"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass" by Lewis Carroll, Alice goes through the looking glass and becomes a pawn in a chess game,
"The Eight" by Katherine Neville, where the characters are sent on an Indiana Jones-style hunt for a lost jeweled chess set,
and
"The Flanders Panel" by Arturo Perez-Reverte, a murder mystery where the characters are researching a famous painting of a chess game.
Can you suggest any others?

Answer 1

Time's Eye
by Arthur C. Clarke, Stephen Baxter
Time's Eye, the first book in Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter's Time Odyssey duology -- a companion series of sorts to Clarke's seminal Space Odyssey saga (2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010: Odyssey Two, et al.) -- is set on an Earth that has been inexplicably rearranged into a patchwork of different historical time periods. In the blink of an eye, the planet and every living thing on it no longer exist on a single timeline: United Nations peacekeepers from the year 2037 inhabit the same continent as Genghis Khan's Mongol horde, Neanderthals, and sabre-tooth tigers!
As refugees stream toward Babylon, a military chess match like the Earth has never seen ensues -- Genghis Khan versus Alexander the Great...

Grandmaster (Otto Penzler Presents Series)
by Warren Murphy, Molly Cochran


Brooks Hansen, The Chess Garden.
A doctor serving in the concentration camps in South Africa during the Boer War sends his wife twelve letters with chess pieces.


Paolo Maurensig, The Luneberg Variation.
The death of a man in a chessboard-shaped maze is linked to chess games played between a concentration camp inmate and commandant.

Stephen Carter, The Emperor of Ocean Park.
A judge who was rejected for the Supreme Court because of his connection to a suspected criminal dies and leaves a mysterious note and a chess piece for his law professor son.

The Royal Game & Other Stories by Stefan Zweig

Alekhine's Anguish: A Novel of the Chess World by Charles D. Yaffe

The Kings Are Already Here by Garret Freymann-Weyr
When Phebe, 15, begins to question her single-minded pursuit of becoming a ballerina, she decides to visit her father in Switzerland. Instead of being a trip to refocus her energy on dance, it evolves into a journey to define herself and her goals. In Geneva, she meets Nikolai Kotalev, an equally dedicated and determined teen whose passion is chess. Her father and his girlfriend have taken the young man under their protective wing and are encouraging his desire to be grandmaster. However, in Nikolai's mind, the only way for him to improve is to be taught by the legendary grandmaster, Stas Vlajnik. Thus the four begin a trek across Europe to various exhibitions and tournaments to find the elusive Vlajnik. This is a beautifully written book about two young people who, until now, have never questioned their chosen careers. More than just a physical journey, the story also follows the spiritual odyssey that both characters undertake. It allows Phebe to grow and change, and it cements Nikolai's devotion to chess. The book also emphasizes the price one must pay for such obsessions.

by Walter Tevis, "The Queens Gambit"

"The Royal Game" by Zwieg

The Chess King, Novel, August, 1975, Hung-Fan Publishing Company/ Chess King, translated by Ivan Zimmerman, Princeton University

THE EMPEROR OF OCEAN PARK By Stephen Carter Alfred A. Knopf 657 pp., $26.95

Answer 2

Samuel Beckett's Endgame (a play, not fiction) besides many others, has a chess-based reading. The title itself is already a strong allusion (the french title is even more explicit: Fin de Partie). The characters can be interpreted as chess-figures which helps in decoding their relationships and Clov's movement even resembles the knight's movement.

Answer 3

probably not. i have been preparation SF for 10 years and the SF memories and novels i have examine that are religiously themed do not finally end up so properly. usually, faith is both a corrupting impact or someone dies, or both. also, once you usher in any mythical supernatural entities mutually with "devil" you right now leave technology fiction and head for myth.

Answer 4

Yes, Chapters has a new release called
"The life of a Loser"
It's about people who are obsessed about chess based fiction novels. Right up your alley !!!

Answer 5

"Searching for Bobby Fischer" is non-fiction, but it is a wonderful book.