Zugzwang
by Ronan Bennett
Bloomsbury, HK$112
'Zugzwang' is a chess term meaning no matter what move a player makes, the position grows worse. The central problem is that the player has to move. It is, as Ronan Bennett has clearly realised, a fine image around which to organise a political thriller filled with plots and counter-plots, games of cats and mice and enough red herrings to stock a franchise of fishmongers. Originally published in instalments in the Observer newspaper, the story begins in 1914. Dr Otto Spethmann is a psychoanalyst living in St Petersburg. Despite being implicated in the murder of a newspaper editor, Spethmann finds himself immersed in a number of interesting case studies. Perhaps the most intriguing is that of a chess player called Rozental, who is referred by Spethmann's old violinist friend, Kopelzon. Before you can say 'Lenin', Spethmann is whisked into a plot involving anti-tsarist revolutionaries, pro-tsarist spies and a beautiful woman called Anna. She has quite an effect on Spethmann, who mutates from Frasier Crane into Joe Frasier in a few pages. This is just as well because no one in early 20th-century St Petersburg is exactly who they seem. Zugzwang is sombre and intelligent and a rattling good read.
