Things She Could Never Have by Tehmina Khan

In his latest novel, Berta Isla, Spanish writer Javier Marías delivers an intense, emotionally charged story based on what, at first sight, could be labeled as a story of love and espionage. Elizabeth Fifer Center Valley, Pennsylvania Javier Marías Berta Isla Madrid. In the brilliant darkness of his story, Maurensig investigates the cost of complicity with evil. One night, in the middle of dinner, a stranger stares at him, drawing her index finger across her throat. His dreams contain evil portents he imagines interrogations. Photographs of him with Josef Goebbels and Hans Frank surface. He attacks Jewish players in print and does not protect Jewish grand masters when he has the chance.

He ignores the persecution of the Jews and does nothing to stop the violence. Only when he feels endangered does he confront his evasions, his impostures. By presenting the story from Alekhine’s point of view, Maurensig allows readers to discover the many layers of his self-deception, including that chess is not political: “My adversary was on the chessboard, not in life.” He thinks his art exempts him from moral judgment. No one even knows for certain where Alekhine is buried. Traveling to Estoril to reconstruct Alekhine’s final days, Maurensig writes, “I like to think I am retracing his footsteps.” A waiter at the Hotel do Parque during the war claims there is an official version that leaves many questions still unanswered. In his framing prologue and epilogue, the author recounts his obsessive investigation of Alekhine’s death in April 1946. In his tense and factbased mystery, Maurensig returns to his fascination with the relationship between chess and war he first explored in his celebrated The Luneberg Variation (1997).

This novel of ideas opens in spring 1946, with Alekhine living at the Hotel do Parque in Estoril, Portugal, just as the Nuremberg trials in Germany have issued their first warrants. Its central character is the infamous Alexandrovich Alekhine, a grand master who collaborated with the Nazis. 179 pages Paolo Maurensig’s Theory of Shadows uses the game of chess as a vehicle to meditate on the Holocaust. In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Things She Could Never Have by Tehmina Khan