Sergey Voronkov

Alexander Alekhine - The Russian Sphinx

Volume I (1892-1921)

• Gebundenes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

***Winner of the Chess Journalists of America Book of the Year award for 2025!***Award-winning historian Sergey Voronkov has written a four-volume psychological biography of Alexander Alekhine, presenting the former world chess champion in a much more complicated, conflicted and tragic light than you have ever seen him before! This first volume traces his early development through to his departure from Soviet Russia in 1921, while also attempting to untangle the knot of his complex relationships with all his five wives.Unpublished or long forgotten memoirs, as well as original newspaper and magazine articles from around the world, are drawn together in forensic research to paint the most extensive picture of Alekhine ever created. Key events in his life are reconsidered, including his release from internment in Germany during World War 1, his escape from execution in Odessa, his service under the Bolsheviks as a detective, his trip to the Urals as a Comintern translator, as well as just how he emigrated.His character development is considered beginning with a detailed examination of his childhood, based on memoirs of his classmates. Voronkov then considers Alekhine's transition from shy boy to dandy (and even the role played in that by his erstwhile friend José Capablanca), as well as how our protagonist gained the mental toughness of a world champion, and his chess philosophy. Some details make you admire him, others make you pity him, still others cast him in an unfavorable light...Chess-wise, Voronkov presents over 50 games and fragments with original commentary by Alekhine and his opponents, most of which has not been published in books before. These include eleven completely unknown Alekhine games as well as ten game scores of other players with light commentary by Alekhine from the first Soviet Championship in 1920, found in Alexander Kotov's archive.In many cases, Alekhine's earliest annotations are compared with his later ones to the same games, often leading to surprising conclusions. In particular, Voronkov highlights brilliant variations shown in Alekhine's analysis that were supposedly found during play but which were actually discovered by the champion only years later when he republished his games. This led to Alekhine radically changing his assessments of positions in his writings as the years passed. We also see how Kotov had a habit of taking Alekhine's commentary and presenting it as his own.This book is illustrated by over 170 photos and other visuals, many published for the first time.Check out the Elk and Ruby website for special offers on this and other books!

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Elk and Ruby
• Seitenzahl: 472
• Erscheinungstermin: 12. Februar 2025
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 240mm x 161mm x 30mm
• Gewicht: 869g
• ISBN-13: 9785604560792
• ISBN-10: 5604560790
• Artikelnr.: 73457859

Autorenporträt

Sergey Voronkov was born in 1954 and lives in Moscow. He is a leading Russian chess historian, journalist and author. Sergey has written ten books in Russian and numerous articles on Russian chess history. He graduated in Journalism from Moscow State University and edited over 100 chess books for the Fizkultura i Sport publishing house in 1978-1991. He was Deputy Chief Editor of the magazine Chess in Russia (the successor to Chess in the USSR) in 1992-1999 working under Yuri Averbakh. As an editor of the Ripol Klassik publishing house in 2002-2015 Sergey increased the total number of books edited by him to around 150, including fourteen written by Garry Kasparov (the original versions of the Modern Chess, Garry Kasparov on Garry Kasparov and My Great Predecessors series among others). He regularly contributes articles to the leading Russian-language ChessPro website. For his first book on David Janowski (1987 in Russian, co-authored with Dmitry Plisetsky) Sergey won the prize for Best Chess Book from the USSR Sports Committee. His other books include David Versus Goliath (2002 in Russian, co-authored with David Bronstein, published in English as Secret Notes, 2007), Russians Versus Fischer (2004 in Russian, co-authored with Dmitry Plisetsky, English editions published in 1994 and 2005, Italian edition published in 2003), Fyodor Bogatyrchuk: the Dr. Zhivago of Soviet Chess (2013 in Russian, in two volumes), Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championships (2007 and 2019 in Russian, in three volumes, the first English volume was published in 2020 and the second in 2021) and The Russian Sphynx. Alexander Alekhine (2020 in Russian). Sergey's father Boris Voronkov was a distinguished chess coach of the RSFSR, an International Master at correspondence chess, an author of two chess books, and a participant in the semi-final of the Soviet Championship in 1956.