The Inner Game

A wonderful achievement so tense, so gripping and so readable STEPHEN FRY A remarkable book The Inner Game has all the compulsion of a good thriller ROBERT HARRIS *** The 1993 World Chess Championship was one of the most eagerly anticipated clashes in the games rich history. On one side was Garri Kasparov, the greatest in a long line of Russian World Champions and a player whose remorseless aggression both in play and in person seemed to terrify his opponents. Across the board was Nigel Short, a bespectacled, guitar-playing 28-year-old Lancastrian who had earned his place in the contest over a gruelling three-year qualification campaign. Their epic duel of the intellect was fought out in the full glare of the worlds media and the intricacies of the battle captivated observers around the world chess experts and novices alike. The Inner Game is an intimate and gripping insiders account of this unique sporting contest. It reveals the secrets of chess at the highest level, from dirty tricks behind the scenes to bugged conversations, stolen tapes and sexual intrigue, and opens up the strange inner world of the Chess Grandmasters, men of a narrow but all-consuming passion. Gripping narrative absorbing between-the-synapses account of an epic drama to which (Lawson) had unique access Sunday Times Brilliantly written Guardian Perhaps the most intimate portrait of a chess genius ever written ROBERT HARRIS Lawson creates great drama out of his material the tension is brilliantly sustained. And no, you dont have to be a chess expert or even to have played the game at all to enjoy this book Independent on Sunday A riveting narrative Observer Immensely readable The characters come through very precisely Daily Telegraph An engrossing study of a rarified world of eccentricity and achievement [a] tale of guile and bugged rooms, bribed coaches, tapped telephones, bluff and counterbluff. Much of it reads like a le Carr novel A closely observed and hugely entertaining portrait of a prodigious British talent Sunday Telegraph If Nigel Short is the John Major of chess, Dominic Lawson is the Jeffrey Archer Whether you like Archer or not, youll love Lawson The Times Lawson does a superb job of evoking tension and narrative in a way that all the coverage at the time failed to do the real flavour of the effort of analysis is captured and the dirty tricks and psychological warfare make good, sensational reading Literary Review *** DOMINIC LAWSON is best known as a former newspaper editor and now weekly leader page columnist for the Sunday Times and Daily Mail . But chess is his passion, as he demonstrated with several series as the presenter of Across the Board for BBC Radio 4, in which he simultaneously interviewed and played against such giants of the game as Magnus Carlsen, Garry Kasparov and the worlds strongest woman player, Hou Yifan. Since 2014 he has been the elected President of the English Chess Federation. In September 1993, Nigel Short was the the first-ever British chess player to challenge for the World Chess Crown. The match with Gary Kasparov was an historic one, and this book provides an account of the match, and the rivalry and tension between the two players.