Mishenka
Daniel Tammet

Moscow, March 1960. In the Soviet Union, where chess is a national sport, the undefeated world champion Maxim Korogin is a hero. For quarter of a century Korogin has beaten every contender by raising the game to a science of Socialist logic and calculation.

Enter the young prodigy Mikhail – ‘Misha’ or ‘Mishenka’ – Gelb, for whom chess is a language, a search for meaning; above all, a kind of poetry. His intuitive feel for the game is unparalleled: ‘it was said of him: he thinks with his hands’. In a thrilling match for the world title that will span two months and be followed by millions, the champion and his unconventional challenger wage battle over the board.

Mishenka is a fascinating account of the age-old confrontation between thought and feeling, art and science – at a watershed moment in the history of a nation, and the Royal Game.