A Year Inside the Chess World

En levende og oppriktig reflektert reisebeskrivelse fra stormester Daniel Gormally fra et år som sjakkproff, på godt og vondt, med en del av hans egne partier og noen andres...

Forlagets egen omtale:

English chess Grandmaster Danny Gormally finds his life at a crossroads. Bored with Berlin defences, sick of the endless grind of the English chess circuit, he tries his luck on the European scene.

In this at times hilarious and tragic account, Gormally shares the inner workings of the chess world — a world riven with insecurities, strange social customs and petty rivalries, while casting his analytical eye even on topics as disparate as eccentric waiters, strange Amsterdam zoos and inspiring mountain passes. It’s a story you won’t want to miss.

Innledningen i boka:

We’re driving back from the South of France, having earlier left Juan les Pins, on the Cote d’Azur. Matthew Wilson is doing the driving. The motorway ahead is burnished with the midday sun. Heat rising from the asphalt creates a shimmering heat-haze in the distance. All of a sudden Matt points out a white car out of control just ahead of us. At first it seems to be too far ahead to mean anything, but then the car spins wildly towards the barrier dividing the motorway, before coming
back into the road. The black car immediately in front of us has no way
of avoiding a collision, and at this moment I was certain we’d crash too. It sounds like a cliche, but time seems to slow down and I feel somewhat disconnected, like this isn’t really happening to me but to someone else. Like it’s something in a movie. By some miracle we stop just short of the accident site, completely un- scathed. There’s debris all around us. Normally at this point I’d be thinking of stopping the car and checking on the people in this horrible crash, but survival instinct has kicked in, so we drive on, shaken. To be honest if we’ d stopped at that moment we’ d have done little to help and probably added to the possibility of something going further wrong. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but feel guilty that we didn’t do anything. I’ll never know what happened to the people in that crash. In the immediate aftermath of this accident, which probably happens
countless times every single day in roads around Europe and the world,
several thoughts are playing through my mind. Firstly how ridiculous it is that I’m scared of fl ying when driving is clearly far more dangerous. But most of all, despite the terrifying nature of this incident, is how it made me feel alive. I can understand why people do extreme sports, why they put their life in danger that way. What it made me realise is what a cocoon I’ve been liv- ing in these last few years. How I’ve been in this safe little bubble where everything is too easy and too safe and I never get challenged. So that was one of the points of writing this book. To document my struggle to improve my life, to challenge my fears. To at least try to over- come my fear of fl ying, which will surely have a knock-on eff ect and help