Summary of Carl Haffner’s Love of the Draw
A shy and modest chess master challenges the reigning world champion for his title in Vienna in 1910. “Carl Haffner’s Love of the Draw” captures the tense atmosphere of this chess tournament, interwoven with flashbacks from the protagonist’s impoverished upbringing in Vienna, his rise as a local chess prodigy in the city’s coffeehouses, and his continued discomfort with public attention.
Reasons to read Carl Haffner’s Love of the Draw
“Carl Haffner’s Love of the Draw” is inspired by a famous 1910 chess match between Austrian chess master Carl Schlechter and German world champion Emanuel Lasker. The Guardian hailed it as “one of chess’s finest novels, sitting comfortably alongside Nabokov’s The Luzhin Defense and Paulo Maurensig’s The LĂĽneburg Variation.” The novel transcends the chess genre, using the game to explore the psychological contrast between the two central characters. Thomas Glavinic, one of Austria’s leading contemporary authors, was awarded the Austrian State Prize for Literature in 2006.
Setting: Vienna (Austria), Berlin (Germany), Budapest (Hungary)
Original title: Carl Haffners Liebe zum Unentschieden
Year of publication: 1998
Nr of pages: 186
