Endgame
by Frank Brady
Blackstone Audio (audiobook)
He may have had all the moves on a chessboard, but during his lifetime Bobby Fischer made innumerable false steps, many of them recounted in Endgame. Narrated by Ray Porter and written by Frank Brady, who played hundreds of games with Fischer, the biography should interest different types of readers for different reasons: chess players might find compelling the long descriptions of his games (especially the 1972 world championship against Boris Spassky); historians, the account of the Soviet-US geopolitical 'dance' choreographed through chess matches; and psychologists, the self-destruction of a genius. Others will be intrigued by Fischer's paranoia, anti-Semitism and relationships with: his Jewish mother; Japanese wife, Miyoko Watai; and Filipina lover, whose paternity claim was disproved by DNA two years after Fischer died in 2008. The portrait is multifaceted, but Brady never gets to grips with the demons that so tormented Fischer, who said, when asked about the September 11 attacks: 'I want to see the US wiped out.'
Extras: none
