Anastasia and the Game of Chess

Italy, spring 1781. A German traveler drifts along the Brenta canal toward Padua, falls into conversation with a sea captain and a learned Venetian, and finds himself drawn into an evening of chess, philosophy, and brilliant argument. Then a young Greek widow named Anastasia sits down at the board - and changes everything.

Anastasia and the Game of Chess is Wilhelm Heinse's final work, published in the year of his death. Framed as a series of letters from Italy, it moves between a quiet love story, a philosophy of genius, a history of the game, and a set of endgames that gave chess its most elegant checkmate pattern - Anastasia's Mate - a name still taught to players today. At its heart it asks a question that has nothing to do with chess and everything to do with it: what separates the mind that sees three moves ahead from the one that, no matter how hard it studies, remains forever blind?

Heinse (1746-1803) was one of the most sensuous and original writers of the German Sturm und Drang, best known for his novel Ardinghello (1787). This, his last book, is quieter and more intimate - a distillation of everything he carried back from three years in Italy: the light, the arguments, the company, and the conviction that imagination and intelligence, wherever they meet, create something that outlasts the moment.

For chess players and non-players alike.