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Kasparov
in EnglandThe book is Garry Kasparov: How Life Imitates Chess, which has just been released in the UK. Kasparov started his promotional activities on ITV's Sunday Edition with Andrew Rawnsley and Andrea Catherwood. After that there are three packed days:
Monday, April 2nd
Tuesday, April 3rd
Wednesday, April 4th
You might want to catch some of the shows, or go to the book signing if you live in London. For those in far-away places here are the most recent and most readable articles:
Occasionally I get asked who is the most charismatic person I’ve interviewed, and, for the past 14 years, I’ve given the same answer: Garry Kasparov. A chess player? People reply. Absolutely, I say. Chess, like boxing, that other great blood sport, like, indeed, Russian politics, is about directly destroying your opponent; Kasparov did that over 64 squares more effectively than anybody else. Up close, you could see why. Intellectually, physically, the man known as the Beast of Baku gave new life to the cliché animal magnetism.
Having met him again, I see no reason to demote him. He retired from professional chess, no longer world champion, but still ranked number one, in 2005. He is now a writer, politician and ardent opponent of Russian president Vladimir Putin. We met in Stockholm, where Kasparov was about to give a talk based on his new book, How Life Imitates Chess, to 250 businesspeople. “We’ve met before,” he said, “in 1993. In Moscow.” I can’t deny I was impressed. Read the rest of this substantial report here.
Great champions, like politicians, are forged in defeat. Garry Kasparov's came in February 1985 at the end of a match for the world championship of chess. Kasparov's rival, Anatoly Karpov, had jumped to an early and seemingly impregnable 5-0 lead. The rules stipulated that the match would be won by the first to win six games. After a long series of draws, Kasparov clawed his way to 5-3. Then Florencio Campomanes, head of the international chess federation, intervened, claiming the players were exhausted. Kasparov, just 21, was enraged. Later that year, he defeated Karpov to win the world title, but the earlier injustice prompted an awakening of another sort. "February 15, 1985," he says now, "was the beginning of my political career."
Having established himself as one of the greatest chess masters of all time, Kasparov is an underdog again. As a leader of the Other Russia, a coalition of opponents to the government of Vladimir Putin, Kasparov has become Russia's most conspicuous political gadfly – a symbol of the sense that as the world prepares for the end of the Putin period, all is not well in Russia. The Other Russia has been holding a series of protest marches, most recently in Nizhny, Novgorod, where the rally was broken up by police. Read the rest of this report here.
Kasparov during the recording of his Najdorf 3 DVD in Berlin last week
At a book signing in Berlin's famous bookstore Dussmann
After a lecture and an animated Q&A session people can have
their books signed
