''Carl Haffner's Love of the Draw'' () is a 1998 chess novel by Austrian writer Thomas Glavinic. It was Glavinic's first novel and is about a shy and withdrawn Viennese

chess master A chess title is a title regulated by a chess governing body and bestowed upon players based on their performance and rank. Such titles are usually granted for life. The international chess governing body FIDE grants several titles, the most pres ...

who in 1910 challenges the

World Champion A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game ...

for his title. The book was translated into English in 1999 by John Brownjohn for London-based publisher

Harvill Press Harvill Secker is a British publishing company formed in 2005 from the merger of Secker & Warburg and the Harvill Press. History Secker & Warburg Secker & Warburg was formed in 1935 from a takeover of Martin Secker, which was in receivership, ...

Plot summary

The novel is set mainly in

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

in 1910. It presents a fictionalised account of a famous 1910 World Chess Championship match between Austrian grandmaster

Carl Schlechter Carl Schlechter (2 March 1874 – 27 December 1918) was a leading Austro-Hungarian chess master and theoretician at the turn of the 20th century. He is best known for drawing a controversial World Chess Championship match with Emanuel Lasker. Ea ...

and the reigning

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

champion

Emanuel Lasker Emanuel Lasker (; December 24, 1868 – January 11, 1941) was a German chess player, mathematician, and philosopher. He was the second World Chess Champion, holding the title for 27 years, from 1894 to 1921, the longest reign of any officially ...

. The eponymous Carl Haffner, closely based on Schlechter, is a withdrawn character with an eccentric preference for

drawing Drawing is a Visual arts, visual art that uses an instrument to mark paper or another two-dimensional surface, or a digital representation of such. Traditionally, the instruments used to make a drawing include pencils, crayons, and ink pens, some ...

games instead of winning. The narrative switches between the ten games of the 1910 World Championship and Haffner's psychological development in

childhood A child () is a human being between the stages of childbirth, birth and puberty, or between the Development of the human body, developmental period of infancy and puberty. The term may also refer to an unborn human being. In English-speaking ...

and

adolescence Adolescence () is a transitional stage of human Developmental biology, physical and psychological Human development (biology), development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood (typically corresponding to the age o ...

, showing how he used chess to overcome poverty.

Critical reception

The UK edition received a range of positive reviews in the mainstream UK press. ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'' called it "strikingly good" and said that it was "one of chess's finest novels, sitting comfortably alongside

Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov ( ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian and American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Rus ...

's '' The Luzhin Defense'' and

Paolo Maurensig Paolo Maurensig (26 March 1943 – 29 May 2021) was an Italian novelist, best known for his book ''Canone inverso'' (1996), a complex tale of a violin and its owners. Biography Maurensig was born in Gorizia, northern Italy. Before becoming a no ...

's ''The Lüneburg Variation''". ''

The Times Literary Supplement ''The Times Literary Supplement'' (''TLS'') is a weekly literary review published in London by News UK, a subsidiary of News Corp. History The ''TLS'' first appeared in 1902 as a supplement to ''The Times'' but became a separate publication ...

'' said: "Glavinic's novel achieves its considerable emotional impact slowly and subtly ... ewrites about a game as if it were a poem or a painting". ''

The Scotsman ''The Scotsman'' is a Scottish compact (newspaper), compact newspaper and daily news website headquartered in Edinburgh. First established as a radical political paper in 1817, it began daily publication in 1855 and remained a broadsheet until ...

'' claimed that the book was "a brisk and powerful portrait of a chess prodigy" presented with "a combination of lyricism, philosophy and edginess". The novel made the 1999 ''

Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was foun ...

'' book of the year list and was nominated for the 2001

International Dublin Literary Award The International Dublin Literary Award (), established as the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, is presented each year for a novel written or translated into English. It promotes excellence in world literature and is solely ...

References

{{reflist, refs= {{Citation , title=Carl Haffner’s Love of the Draw , last=Glavinic , first=Thomas , authorlink=Thomas Glavinic , publisher=

, location=

London London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...

, edition=1st , date=12 October 1999 , isbn=978-1-86046-676-2

External links

Carl Haffner’s Love of the Draw at the complete review literary website

Carl Haffner’s Love of the Draw at Thomas Glavinic official website (German)

1998 Austrian novels German-language novels Novels set in Vienna Chess in Austria Novels about chess Fiction set in 1910 1998 debut novels