A chess grandmaster reveals the powerful teachings this ancient game offers for staying present, thriving in a complex world, and crafting a fulfilling life. Refined and perfected through 1,500 years of human history, chess has long been a touchstone for shrewd tacticians and master strategists. But the game is much more than just warfare in miniature. Chess is also an ever-shifting puzzle to be solved, a narrative to be written, and a task that demands players create their own motivation from moment to moment. In other words, as Grandmaster Jonathan Rowson argues in this kaleidoscopic and inspiring book, there are ways to see all of life reflected in those 64 black and white squares. Taking us inside the psychologically charged world of chess's global elite, Rowson mines the game for its insights into sustaining focus, quieting our inner saboteur, making tough decisions, overcoming failure, and more. He peels back the beguiling logic of chess to reveal the timeless wisdom underneath. This exhilarating tour ranges from learning how to love our mistakes to considering why people are like trees; from the mysteries of parenting to the beauty of technical details, to the endgame of death. Throughout, chess emerges as a powerful and accessible metaphor for the thrills and setbacks that fill our daily lives with meaning and beauty.

Raja Rao, b. 1909, Indo-English novelist.

The Chessmaster and His Moves is a most ambitious novel, and like most of Raja Rao's writing, rooted in Indian tradition, thought and sensibility. At one level The Chessmaster is the story of an impossible love between Sivarama Sastri, an Indian mathematician working in Paris, and a married woman which can only end in sorrow and despair. To come to terms with its impossibility, the protaganists turn inward in their search for answer and meaning, transforming the book into a metaphysical exploration. Amidst this search, each and every act, big or seemingly small, gets imbued with special meaning. Sastri's love for the French actress, Suzanne Chantereux, or her beguiling, effervescent compatriot Mireille, for instance, serves to underline the differences between the East and West; while the latter seeks happiness in the world, Sastri is looking for freedom from the world itself. The Chessmaster is rich: in language, plot, in complexity, too, it is rich. And rich in locale and in its large cast of memorable characters; Indian, European, African and Jewish. By turns tender, tragic, sensuous- or filled with laughter and delight- the book nevertheless remains utterly serious, concerned with the author's abstract search for the Absolute. Grand in sweep and range, and functioning at multiple levels, the story moves from France to London, and on to the Himalayas and Bengal and contains, perhaps for the first time ever in a literary work, a dialogue between a Brahmin and a Rabbi: an exploration of reasons for Holocaust and an attempt to expiate it.

The Book Presents Raja Rao S Fic¬Tional World From A Refreshingly New Perspective. It Offers A Compre¬Hensive Account Of The Philosophi¬Cal Content In His Novels And Traces The Patterns Of Interaction Between Indian Metaphysical Tradition And The Culture Of The West. Dr. Dayal Shows How Raja Rao Has Developed His Vedantic Tantric Weltenschauung Through Absorption Of Similar Motifs Propounded By Certain Prominent Western Writers. The Study Of This Twin Insemination, Dealt In Depth And Subtlety, Makes A Significant Contribution To Indo-English Scho¬Larship.