Caissa's Gifts of Alexander Kazantsev

In soviet literature, and specifically in fiction, there has always been a place for chess. And especially for chess endgame studies. The science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev stands apart from all this diversity. Perhaps, the writer Alexander Kazantsev, being a wonderful chess composer, opened a new genre of the "chess novel", which so far has not been continued by anyone. The genre of a small art story in which the chess endgame study is based as the foundation, in the process of overgrowing narrative characters, protagonists and antagonists, and surrounding events. But for a moment he does not give doubts that the main thing in the story is on the chess diagram, and the burning events happening around the chessboard are just a background for genuine art.

Among Alexander Kazantsev's stories dedicated to chess single out such works as: "Caissa's Gift", "Ivory Plate", "Fatal Bomb" and "Chess on the Bottom of the Well".

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In 1975 Kazantsev's chess novel "Fatal Bomb" was released, the main story of which is completely based on the chess endgame study which is given below:

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Continuing the theme of chess stories of science fiction writer Alexander Kazantsev one cannot fail to mention another chess endgame study from the novel "Ivory Plate".

There is a set of two chess diagrams:

It seems that these two chess diagrams have nothing in common. And nevertheless...

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According to the two chess endgame studies mentioned above the reader can make an impression of how much this soviet writer left in the chess composition.

This fall Alexander Kazantsev would have turned 112 years old.

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Russian version of this article can be found here.