Book description
Genna Sosonko is widely acclaimed as the most prominent chronicler of a unique era in chess history when the Soviet Union developed chess into an ideological weapon to demonstrate the power of socialism. Sosonko was born in Leningrad, where he lived for 29 years. After he emigrated to the Netherlands,…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Essential Sosonko as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
The life of a professional chess player is a lonely one, spent camouflaging fears and insecurities from competitors while fighting those same demons behind the chess board for hours on end.
Genna Sosonko paints a series of wonderful, empathetic portraits of (sometimes tortured) geniuses of chess, many of whom he knew intimately through long years of friendship.
It’s a book of deep humanity that moved me differently every time I read it. It’s the book to gift to a non-chess player to articulate why chess can fascinate you all your life and why life in chess is so much more…
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