Alexey Konakov "Tabia Thirty-Two" Moscow: Individum, 2024

The chess terms here sound like everyday speech, the history and realities of chess are carefully crafted and reflect reality, but the reader is presented not with a study but with an ironic science fiction novel, one that tempts one to call a dystopia, and then, conversely, a utopia. It is based on a rather strange and therefore remarkable premise: in the distant future, Russia finds itself in complete isolation due to imperial ambitions. Literature is blamed, for it was Dostoevsky and Tolstoy who instilled in Russians those accursed questions about the exceptional nature of their path. Ultimately, Pushkin was replaced by Botvinnik, the national idea by the game, and citizens, freed from intellectual suffering and therefore generally happy, froze in anticipation of the lifting of the total quarantine from the country. Of course, as is often the case in good books, the reader understands that even in this wonderful world, not everything is so clear-cut, even before the plot is set.  

"Chess is our cultural code, what unites us all, what keeps society, people, and country from falling apart, what makes us us."