Chess in the arts and literature - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

became a source of inspiration in the arts in literature soon after the spread of the game to the Arab World

Arab world

The Arab world refers to Arabic-speaking states, territories and populations in North Africa, Western Asia and elsewhere.The standard definition of the Arab world comprises the 22 states and territories of the Arab League stretching from the Atlantic Ocean in the west to the Arabian Sea in the...

and Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

in the Middle Ages

Middle Ages

The Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...

. The earliest works of art centered around the game are miniatures

Miniature (illuminated manuscript)

The word miniature, derived from the Latin minium, red lead, is a picture in an ancient or medieval illuminated manuscript; the simple decoration of the early codices having been miniated or delineated with that pigment...

in medieval manuscripts, as well as poems, which were often created with the purpose of describing the rules

Rules of chess

The rules of chess are rules governing the play of the game of chess. While the exact origins of chess are unclear, modern rules first took form during the Middle Ages. The rules continued to be slightly modified until the early 19th century, when they reached essentially their current form. The...

. After chess gained popularity in the 15th and 16th centuries, many works of art related to the game were created. One of the most well-known, Marco Girolamo Vida

Marco Girolamo Vida

Marco Girolamo Vida or Marcus Hieronymus Vida was an Italian humanist, bishop and poet. Born at Cremona, Vida joined the court of Pope Leo X and was given a prior at Frascati. He became bishop of Alba in 1532....

's Scaccia ludus, written in 1527, made such an impression on the readers, that it single handedly inspired other authors to create poems about chess.

In the 20th century, artists created many works related to the game, sometimes taking their inspiration from the life of famous players (Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

in The Defense
The Defense
The Defense is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov during his emigration in Berlin and published in 1930.-Plot summary:The plot concerns the title character, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. As a boy, he is considered unattractive, withdrawn, and an object of ridicule by his classmates...

) or well-known games (Paul Anderson

Paul Anderson

- Politics and public figures :* Paul Anderson , member of the Minnesota House of Representatives* Paul H. Anderson , U.S. judge* Paul Francis Anderson , U.S...

in Immortal Game, John Brunner

John Brunner (novelist)

John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...

in The Squares of the City
The Squares of the City
The Squares of the City is a science fiction novel written by John Brunner and first published in 1965 . It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1966....

). Some authors invented new chess variant

Chess variant

A chess variant is a game related to, derived from or inspired by chess. The difference from chess might include one or more of the following:...

s in their works, such as stealth chess in Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett

Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett, OBE is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels...

's Discworld
Discworld
Discworld is a comic fantasy book series by English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from, J. R. R....

series or Tri-Dimensional chess in the Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

series.

10th to 18th century

The earliest known reference to chess in a European text is a Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin

Medieval Latin was the form of Latin used in the Middle Ages, primarily as a medium of scholarly exchange and as the liturgical language of the medieval Roman Catholic Church, but also as a language of science, literature, law, and administration. Despite the clerical origin of many of its authors,...

poem, Versus de scachis
Versus de scachis
Versus de scachis is a Medieval Latin poem about chess. It is found on two manuscripts from Einsiedeln: MS Einsidlensis 365 and MS Einsidlensis 309. A copy of the poem in manuscript 319 at Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln has been given the estimated date of 997 CE...

. The oldest manuscript containing this poem has been given the estimated date of 997. Other early examples include miniatures

Miniature (illuminated manuscript)

accompanying books. Some of them have high artistic value. The best known example is perhaps the 13th century Libro de los juegos
Libro de los juegos
The Libro de los Juegos, , or Libro de acedrex, dados e tablas, was commissioned by Alfonso X of Castile, Galicia and León and completed in his scriptorium in Toledo in 1283, is an exemplary piece of Alfonso’s medieval literary legacy.Consisting of ninety-seven leaves of parchment, many with color...

. The book contains 151 illustrations, and while most of them are centered on the board, showing problems

Chess problem

A chess problem, also called a chess composition, is a puzzle set by somebody using chess pieces on a chess board, that presents the solver with a particular task to be achieved. For instance, a position might be given with the instruction that White is to move first, and checkmate Black in two...

, the players and architectural settings are different in each picture. The pieces illustrating chess problems in Luca Pacioli

Luca Pacioli

Fra Luca Bartolomeo de Pacioli was an Italian mathematician, Franciscan friar, collaborator with Leonardo da Vinci, and seminal contributor to the field now known as accounting...

's manuscript De ludo scacchorum
De ludo scacchorum
De ludo scacchorum or De ludo scachorum , also known as Schifanoia , is a manuscript on the game of chess written around 1500 by Luca Pacioli, a leading mathematician of the Renaissance...

(c. 1500), described as "futuristic" even by today's standards, may have been designed by Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

.

After chess became gradually more popular in Europe in the 15th and 16th centuries, especially in Spain and Italy, many artists began writing poems using chess as a theme. Scachs d'amor
Scachs d'amor
Scachs d'amor , whose complete title is Hobra intitulada scachs d'amor feta per don franci de Castelvi e Narcis vinyoles e mossen fenollar is the name of a poem written by Francesc de Castellví, Bernat Fenollar, and Narcís de Vinyoles, published in Valencia, Spain towards the end of the 15th...

, written by an unknown artist in the end of the 15th century, describes a game between Mars

Mars (mythology)

Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...

and Venus

Venus (mythology)

Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...

, using chess as an allegory

Allegory

Allegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...

of love. The story also serves as a pretence to describe the rules of the game. De ludo scacchorum (unrelated to the manuscript menitoned above) by Francisco Bernardino Caldogno, also created at that time, is a collection of gameplay advice, presented in poetic fashion.

One of the most influential works of chess-related art is Marco Girolamo Vida

Marco Girolamo Vida

's Scaccia ludus (1527), centered on a game played between Apollo

Apollo

Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

and Mercury

Mercury (mythology)

Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces...

on Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus

Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, located on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, about 100 kilometres away from Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks. The highest peak Mytikas, meaning "nose", rises to 2,917 metres...

. It is said that, because of its high artistry, the poem made a great impression on anyone who read it, including Desiderius Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus

Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus , known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and a theologian....

. It also directly inspired at least two other works. The first is Jan Kochanowski

Jan Kochanowski

Jan Kochanowski was a Polish Renaissance poet who established poetic patterns that would become integral to Polish literary language.He is commonly regarded as the greatest Polish poet before Adam Mickiewicz, and the greatest Slavic poet, prior to the 19th century.-Life:Kochanowski was born at...

's poem Chess
Chess (poem)
Chess is a poem written by Jan Kochanowski, first published in 1564 or 1565. Inspired by Marco Girolamo Vida's Scacchia Ludus, it is a narrative poetry work that describes a game of chess between two men, Fiedor and Borzuj, who fight for the right to marry Anna, princess of Denmark...

(c. 1565), which describes the game as a battle between two armies, while the second is William Jones'

William Jones (philologist)

Sir William Jones was an English philologist and scholar of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages...

Caissa, or the game of chess (1772). The latter poem popularised the pseudo-ancient Greek dryad

Dryad

Dryads are tree nymphs in Greek mythology. In Greek drys signifies 'oak,' from an Indo-European root *derew- 'tree' or 'wood'. Thus Dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, though the term has come to be used for all tree nymphs in general...

Caïssa

Caissa

Caïssa is a mythical Thracian dryad portrayed as the goddess of chess, as invented during the Renaissance by Italian poet Hieronymus Vida.-Vida's poem:...

to be the "goddess of chess".

19th century onwards

Since the 19th century, artists have been creating novels and – since the 20th century – films related to chess. Sometimes, they are inspired by famous games, like John Brunner

John Brunner (novelist)

's The Squares of the City
The Squares of the City
The Squares of the City is a science fiction novel written by John Brunner and first published in 1965 . It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1966....

, structured after the famous match between Wilhelm Steinitz

Wilhelm Steinitz

Wilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian and then American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier...

and Mikhail Chigorin

Mikhail Chigorin

Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin also was a leading Russian chess player...

; Poul Anderson

Poul Anderson

Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories...

's short story Immortal Game, inspired by the 1851 game

Immortal game

The Immortal Game was a chess game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London, during a break of the first international tournament. The very bold sacrifices made by Anderssen to finally secure victory have made it one of the most famous chess games of all time...

played by Adolf Anderssen

Adolf Anderssen

Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was a German chess master. He is considered to have been the world's leading chess player in the 1850s and 1860s...

and Lionel Kieseritzky

Lionel Kieseritzky

Lionel Adalbert Bagration Felix Kieseritzky was a 19th-century chess master, famous primarily for a game he lost against Adolf Anderssen, which because of its brilliance was named "The Immortal Game".-Early life:...

(which also appears in the film Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...

); or Waldemar Łysiak's Szachista , centered around a game played between Napoleon Bonaparte and The Turk

The Turk

The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player , was a fake chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854, it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was exposed in the early 1820s as an...

. The game Frank Poole versus HAL 9000 from the film 2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...

is also based on an actual match, albeit not widely known.

Other artists drawn their inspirations from the life of players. Vladimir Nabokov

Vladimir Nabokov

wrote The Defense
The Defense
The Defense is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov during his emigration in Berlin and published in 1930.-Plot summary:The plot concerns the title character, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. As a boy, he is considered unattractive, withdrawn, and an object of ridicule by his classmates...

after learning about Curt von Bardeleben

Curt von Bardeleben

Curt von Bardeleben was a Count and a German chess master who committed suicide by jumping out of a window in 1924. His life and death were the basis for that of the main character in the novel The Defense by Vladimir Nabokov, which was made into the movie The Luzhin Defence...

, while the musical Chess
Chess (musical)
Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a romantic triangle between two top players, an American and a Russian, in a world chess championship, and a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other;...

was loosely based on the life of Bobby Fischer

Bobby Fischer

Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...

. Some authors invented new chess variant

Chess variant

A chess variant is a game related to, derived from or inspired by chess. The difference from chess might include one or more of the following:...

s in their works, such as stealth chess in Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett

Marcel Duchamp

Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

, who almost fully suspended his artistic career to focus on chess in 1923.

In literature

Poems

Versus de scachis
Versus de scachis
Versus de scachis is a Medieval Latin poem about chess. It is found on two manuscripts from Einsiedeln: MS Einsidlensis 365 and MS Einsidlensis 309. A copy of the poem in manuscript 319 at Stiftsbibliothek Einsiedeln has been given the estimated date of 997 CE...

(c. 997), earliest known reference to chess in a European text
Scachs d'amor
Scachs d'amor
Scachs d'amor , whose complete title is Hobra intitulada scachs d'amor feta per don franci de Castelvi e Narcis vinyoles e mossen fenollar is the name of a poem written by Francesc de Castellví, Bernat Fenollar, and Narcís de Vinyoles, published in Valencia, Spain towards the end of the 15th...

(late 15th century). Describes a game between Mars
Mars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...

and Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
De ludo scachorum (On the Game of Chess) (early 16th century) by Francisco Bernardino Caldogno. A collection of chess gameplay advice in poetic form
Scaccia ludus (1527) by Marco Girolamo Vida
Marco Girolamo Vida
Marco Girolamo Vida or Marcus Hieronymus Vida was an Italian humanist, bishop and poet. Born at Cremona, Vida joined the court of Pope Leo X and was given a prior at Frascati. He became bishop of Alba in 1532....

. The poem describes a game of chess played by Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...

and Mercury on Mount Olympus
Mount Olympus
Mount Olympus is the highest mountain in Greece, located on the border between Thessaly and Macedonia, about 100 kilometres away from Thessaloniki, Greece's second largest city. Mount Olympus has 52 peaks. The highest peak Mytikas, meaning "nose", rises to 2,917 metres...
Chess
Chess (poem)
Chess is a poem written by Jan Kochanowski, first published in 1564 or 1565. Inspired by Marco Girolamo Vida's Scacchia Ludus, it is a narrative poetry work that describes a game of chess between two men, Fiedor and Borzuj, who fight for the right to marry Anna, princess of Denmark...

(c. 1565) by Jan Kochanowski
Jan Kochanowski
Jan Kochanowski was a Polish Renaissance poet who established poetic patterns that would become integral to Polish literary language.He is commonly regarded as the greatest Polish poet before Adam Mickiewicz, and the greatest Slavic poet, prior to the 19th century.-Life:Kochanowski was born at...

. An epos
Epic poetry
An epic is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. Oral poetry may qualify as an epic, and Albert Lord and Milman Parry have argued that classical epics were fundamentally an oral poetic form...

parody which portrays a game of chess as a battle between two armies
Caissa, or the game of chess (1772) by William Jones
William Jones (philologist)
Sir William Jones was an English philologist and scholar of ancient India, particularly known for his proposition of the existence of a relationship among Indo-European languages...

. Inspired by ancient Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...

, the poem tells the story of dryad
Dryad
Dryads are tree nymphs in Greek mythology. In Greek drys signifies 'oak,' from an Indo-European root *derew- 'tree' or 'wood'. Thus Dryads are specifically the nymphs of oak trees, though the term has come to be used for all tree nymphs in general...

Caissa
Caissa
Caïssa is a mythical Thracian dryad portrayed as the goddess of chess, as invented during the Renaissance by Italian poet Hieronymus Vida.-Vida's poem:...

, with whom Mars
Mars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...

falls in love. In an attempt to win her heart, Mars asks the god of sport to create a gift for Caissa. The god creates the game of chess
A Game of Chess, a section in The Waste Land
The Waste Land
The Waste Land[A] is a 434-line[B] modernist poem by T. S. Eliot published in 1922. It has been called "one of the most important poems of the 20th century." Despite the poem's obscurity—its shifts between satire and prophecy, its abrupt and unannounced changes of speaker, location and time, its...

(1922) by T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
The Game of Chess included in Dreamtigers
Dreamtigers
Dreamtigers, first published in 1960 as El Hacedor , is a collection of poems, short essays, and literary sketches by the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. Divided fairly evenly between prose and verse, the collection examines the limitations of creativity. Borges regarded Dreamtigers as his most...

(1960), a poem (two sonnets) by Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

Novels

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) by Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll
Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

. The book is chess-themed. Most main characters in the story are represented as chess pieces, with the main protagonist, Alice, being a pawn
Pawn (chess)
The pawn is the most numerous and weakest piece in the game of chess, historically representing infantry, or more particularly armed peasants or pikemen. Each player begins the game with eight pawns, one on each square of the rank immediately in front of the other pieces...
The Twelve Chairs
The Twelve Chairs
The Twelve Chairs is a classic satirical novel by the Soviet authors Ilf and Petrov, released in 1928. Its main character Ostap Bender reappears in the book's sequel The Little Golden Calf.-Plot:...

(1928) by Ilf and Petrov
Ilf and Petrov
Ilya Ilf Ilya Ilf Ilya Ilf (Ilya Arnoldovich Faynzilberg and Evgeny or Yevgeni Petrov (Yevgeniy Petrovich Kataev or Katayev were two Soviet prose authors of the 1920s and 1930s...

, partially taking place at a chess club
The Defense
The Defense
The Defense is a Russian novel written by Vladimir Nabokov during his emigration in Berlin and published in 1930.-Plot summary:The plot concerns the title character, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. As a boy, he is considered unattractive, withdrawn, and an object of ridicule by his classmates...

(1930) by Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Nabokov
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov was a multilingual Russian novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist...

. The main character, Aleksandr Luzhin, suffers from mental problems because of his obsession with chess
The Royal Game
The Royal Game
The Royal Game is a novella by Austrian author Stefan Zweig first published in 1942, after the author's death by suicide...

(1942), a novella by Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig
Stefan Zweig was an Austrian novelist, playwright, journalist and biographer. At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most famous writers in the world.- Biography :...
All the King's Horses (1951) by Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...

, also included in Welcome to the Monkey House
Welcome to the Monkey House
Welcome to the Monkey House is an assortment of short stories written by Kurt Vonnegut, first published in August 1968. The stories range from war-time epics to futuristic thrillers, given with satire and Vonnegut's unique edge...

(1968)
From Russia, with Love (1957) by Ian Fleming
Ian Fleming
Ian Lancaster Fleming was a British author, journalist and Naval Intelligence Officer.Fleming is best known for creating the fictional British spy James Bond and for a series of twelve novels and nine short stories about the character, one of the biggest-selling series of fictional books of...

, part of the James Bond
James Bond
James Bond, code name 007, is a fictional character created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short story collections. There have been a six other authors who wrote authorised Bond novels or novelizations after Fleming's death in 1964: Kingsley Amis,...

series. One of the villains, Tov Kronsteen, is a chess grand master who applies chess principles to espionage
Forbidden Planet (1961) by Lionel Fanthorpe
Lionel Fanthorpe
The Reverend Robert Lionel Fanthorpe is a British priest and entertainer, and has at various times worked as a journalist, teacher, television presenter, author and lecturer...

using the pseudonym John E. Muller, which describes an interstellar chess game played by superhuman entities using humans as pawns.
The Squares of the City
The Squares of the City
The Squares of the City is a science fiction novel written by John Brunner and first published in 1965 . It was nominated for the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1966....

(1965), a science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

novel by John Brunner
John Brunner (novelist)
John Kilian Houston Brunner was a prolific British author of science fiction novels and stories. His 1968 novel Stand on Zanzibar, about an overpopulated world, won the 1968 Hugo Award for best science fiction novel. It also won the BSFA award the same year...

, structured after the famous 1892 chess game between Wilhelm Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz
Wilhelm Steinitz was an Austrian and then American chess player and the first undisputed world chess champion from 1886 to 1894. From the 1870s onwards, commentators have debated whether Steinitz was effectively the champion earlier...

and Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Chigorin
Mikhail Ivanovich Chigorin also was a leading Russian chess player...

.
Invisible Cities
Invisible Cities
Invisible Cities is a novel by Italian writer Italo Calvino. It was published in Italy in 1972 by Giulio Einaudi Editore.-Description:The book explores imagination and the imaginable through the descriptions of cities by an explorer, Marco Polo...

(1972) by Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino
Italo Calvino was an Italian journalist and writer of short stories and novels. His best known works include the Our Ancestors trilogy , the Cosmicomics collection of short stories , and the novels Invisible Cities and If on a winter's night a traveler .Lionised in Britain and the United States,...
The Westing Game
The Westing Game
The Westing Game is a 1979 Newbery Medal winning novel by Ellen Raskin. It has been adapted into a movie, released under both the names The Westing Game and Get a Clue...

(1978) by Ellen Raskin
Ellen Raskin
Ellen Ermingard Raskin was an American writer, illustrator and fashion designer. She was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and grew up during the Great Depression. She was educated at the University of Wisconsin at Madison...
Szachista (1980) by Waldemar Łysiak, centered around the game of chess between Napoleon Bonaparte and The Turk
The Turk
The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player , was a fake chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854, it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was exposed in the early 1820s as an...
The Queen's Gambit
The Queen's Gambit (novel)
The Queen's Gambit is an American novel by Walter Tevis. The bildungsroman coming-of-age novel was originally published in 1983 and covers themes in feminism, chess, drug addiction, and alcoholism.-Epigraph:...

(1983), a thriller novel by Walter Tevis
Walter Tevis
Walter Stone Tevis was an American novelist and short story writer. Three of his six novels were adapted into major films: The Hustler, The Color of Money and The Man Who Fell to Earth...

. The main protagonist, Beth Harmon, is a chess player
The Tower Struck By Lightning (1983) by Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal
Fernando Arrabal Terán is a Spanish playwright, screenwriter, film director, novelist and poet. He settled in France in 1955, he describes himself as “desterrado,” or “half-expatriate, half-exiled.”...
The Discworld
Discworld
Discworld is a comic fantasy book series by English author Sir Terry Pratchett, set on the Discworld, a flat world balanced on the backs of four elephants which, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, Great A'Tuin. The books frequently parody, or at least take inspiration from, J. R. R....

series (since 1983) by Terry Prachett features a chess variant called Stealth Chess, which adds an assassin piece to the game. It is described in The Discworld Companion
The Discworld Companion
The Discworld Companion is an encyclopaedia of the Discworld fictional universe created by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Briggs.The book compiles a precise definition of words, lives of historical people, geography of places and events that have appeared in at least one Discworld novel, map, diary,...

(1994)
Unsound Variations (1987), a novella by George R. R. Martin
George R. R. Martin
George Raymond Richard Martin , sometimes referred to as GRRM, is an American author and screenwriter of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He is best known for A Song of Ice and Fire, his bestselling series of epic fantasy novels that HBO adapted for their dramatic pay-cable series Game of...

included in Portraits of His Children
The Eight
The Eight (novel)
The Eight, published December 27, 1988, is American author Katherine Neville's debut novel. Compared to the works of Umberto Eco when it first appeared, it is a postmodern thriller in which the heroine, accountant Catherine Velis, must enter into a cryptic world of danger and conspiracy in order to...

(1988) by Katherine Neville. The main character, Catherine Velis, tries to recover the pieces of a chess set once owned by Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club
The Joy Luck Club is a best-selling novel written by Amy Tan. It focuses on four Chinese American immigrant families in San Francisco, California who start a club known as "the Joy Luck Club," playing the Chinese game of mahjong for money while feasting on a variety of foods...

(1989) by Amy Tan
Amy Tan
Amy Tan is an American writer whose works explore mother-daughter relationships. Her most well-known work is The Joy Luck Club, which has been translated into 35 languages...
The Flanders Panel
The Flanders Panel
The Flanders Panel is a novel written by Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte in 1990, telling of a mystery hidden in an art masterpiece spanning from the 15th century to the present day.-Plot summary:...

(1990) by Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
Arturo Pérez-Reverte Gutiérrez is a Spanish novelist and journalist. He worked as a war correspondent for twenty-one years . His first novel, El húsar, set in the Napoleonic Wars, was released in 1986. He is well known outside Spain for his "Alatriste" series of novels...

, a chess-themed crime novel
The Lüneberg Variation (1993) by Paolo Maurensig
Paolo Maurensig
Paolo Maurensig is an Italian novelist, best known for the book Canone inverso , a complex tale of a violin and its owners.-Biography:Maurensig was born at Udine....
Harry Potter series (1997–2007) by J. K. Rowling
J. K. Rowling
Joanne "Jo" Rowling, OBE , better known as J. K. Rowling, is the British author of the Harry Potter fantasy series...

. The series fictional universe features wizard's chess, a chess variant where the pieces are similar to living beings, to which the players give orders by voice
Lord Loss
Lord Loss
Lord Loss is the first novel in the fictional Demonata series book by best-selling teenage horror author Darren Shan. It was originally published in the UK on 6 June 2005. Soon after, it appeared in Japan and America, where Shan's previous series, The Saga of Darren Shan, had sold millions...

(2005) by Darren Shan
Darren Shan
Darren O'Shaughnessy , who commonly writes under the pen name Darren Shan, is an Irish author. Darren Shan is also the main character in Shan's The Saga of Darren Shan young-adult fiction series. He also wrote The Demonata series as well as the stand-alone books, Koyasan and The Thin Executioner...

. The main character, Grubbs Grady
Grubbs Grady
Grubitsch "Grubbs" Grady is one of the main character in The Demonata series by Darren Shan. He is the protagonist of the first book , the third , the fifth the sixth , the eighth and the tenth...

, lives in a family of chess players

Short stories

Striding Folly (1939) by Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer, poet, playwright, essayist, translator and Christian humanist. She was also a student of classical and modern languages...
The Immortal Game (1954) by Poul Anderson
Poul Anderson
Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories...

, inspired by the 1851 game
Immortal game
The Immortal Game was a chess game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London, during a break of the first international tournament. The very bold sacrifices made by Anderssen to finally secure victory have made it one of the most famous chess games of all time...

played by Adolf Anderssen
Adolf Anderssen
Karl Ernst Adolf Anderssen was a German chess master. He is considered to have been the world's leading chess player in the 1850s and 1860s...

and Lionel Kieseritzky
Lionel Kieseritzky
Lionel Adalbert Bagration Felix Kieseritzky was a 19th-century chess master, famous primarily for a game he lost against Adolf Anderssen, which because of its brilliance was named "The Immortal Game".-Early life:...
Quarantine (1977), a short story by Arthur C. Clarke
Arthur C. Clarke
Sir Arthur Charles Clarke, CBE, FRAS was a British science fiction author, inventor, and futurist, famous for his short stories and novels, among them 2001: A Space Odyssey, and as a host and commentator in the British television series Mysterious World. For many years, Robert A. Heinlein,...

, about an extraterrestrial civilization
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

which discovers chess after visiting Earth
Unicorn Variation (1983) by Roger Zelazny
Roger Zelazny
Roger Joseph Zelazny was an American writer of fantasy and science fiction short stories and novels, best known for his The Chronicles of Amber series...

, included in Unicorn Variations
Unicorn Variations
Unicorn Variations is a collection of stories and essays by author Roger Zelazny, published in 1983. The title story, "Unicorn Variation", was written as a result of Zelazny having been asked to contribute to two different upcoming anthologies — one collecting stories set in bars, and one...

Films

Entr'acte
Entr'acte (film)
Entr'acte is a 1924 French short film directed by René Clair, which premiered as an entr'acte for the Ballets Suédois production Relâche at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Relâche is based on a book and with settings by Francis Picabia, produced by Rolf de Maré, and with choreography by...

(1924), a short Dadaist film by René Clair
René Clair
René Clair born René-Lucien Chomette, was a French filmmaker.-Biography:He was born in Paris and grew up in the Les Halles quarter. He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. During World War I, he served as an ambulance driver. After the war, he started a career as a journalist...
Casablanca
Casablanca (film)
Casablanca is a 1942 American romantic drama film directed by Michael Curtiz, starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman and Paul Henreid, and featuring Claude Rains, Conrad Veidt, Sydney Greenstreet, Peter Lorre and Dooley Wilson. Set during World War II, it focuses on a man torn between, in...

(1942), One of the main characters, Rick Blaine (played by Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....

), replays a game
The Seventh Seal
The Seventh Seal
The Seventh Seal is a 1957 Swedish film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. Set during the Black Death, it tells of the journey of a medieval knight and a game of chess he plays with the personification of Death , who has come to take his life. Bergman developed the film from his own play...

(1957), centered around a game of chess between a medieval knight and the personification of Death
Death (personification)
The concept of death as a sentient entity has existed in many societies since the beginning of history. In English, Death is often given the name Grim Reaper and, from the 15th century onwards, came to be shown as a skeletal figure carrying a large scythe and clothed in a black cloak with a hood...
From Russia with Love
From Russia with Love (film)
From Russia with Love is the second in the James Bond spy film series, and the second to star Sean Connery as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Released in 1963, the film was produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and directed by Terence Young. It is based on the 1957 novel of the...

(1963), based on the Ian Fleming novel of the same name, mentioned above
2001: A Space Odyssey
2001: A Space Odyssey (film)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, and co-written by Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, partially inspired by Clarke's short story The Sentinel...

(1968), features a game of chess played between the HAL 9000
HAL 9000
HAL 9000 is the antagonist in Arthur C. Clarke's science fiction Space Odyssey saga. HAL is an artificial intelligence that interacts with the astronaut crew of the Discovery One spacecraft, usually represented as a red television-camera eye found throughout the ship...

computer an astronaut, Frank Poole (see Poole – HAL 9000)
The Chess Players (1977), one of the subplots tells the story of two men obsessed with shatranj
Shatranj
Shatranj is an old form of chess, which came to the Western world from India. Modern chess has gradually developed from this game.-Etymology and origins:...
Mystery of Chessboxing
Mystery of Chessboxing
Mystery of Chessboxing is a kung fu film released in 1979 and directed by Joseph Koo, starring Mark Long, Jack Long and Lee Yi Min.-Plot:...

(1979)
Blade Runner
Blade Runner
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott and starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, and Sean Young. The screenplay, written by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K...

(1982), the replicant Roy Batty and his creator Eldon Tyrell play a game of chess (based on the Immortal Game
Immortal game
The Immortal Game was a chess game played by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky on 21 June 1851 in London, during a break of the first international tournament. The very bold sacrifices made by Anderssen to finally secure victory have made it one of the most famous chess games of all time...

)
Dangerous Moves (1984), about two men competing in the World Chess Championship Games
Mighty Pawns (1987)
Knight Moves
Knight Moves
Knight Moves is a 1992 American thriller film, directed by Carl Schenkel and written by Brad Mirman, about a chess grandmaster who is accused of several grisly murders.-Synopsis:...

(1992), about a chess grandmaster who is accused of several murders
Searching for Bobby Fischer
Searching for Bobby Fischer
Searching for Bobby Fischer is a 1993 film based on the life of prodigy chess player Joshua Waitzkin, played by Max Pomeranc. Adapted from the book of the same name by Joshua's father Fred, the film was written and directed by Steven Zaillian...

(1993), based on the life of Joshua Waitzkin
Joshua Waitzkin
Joshua Waitzkin is an American chess player, martial arts competitor, and author. As a child, he was recognized as a prodigy, and won the U.S. Junior Chess championship in 1993 and 1994. He is the only person to have won the National Primary, Elementary, Junior High School, High School, U.S....
Fresh (1994)
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption
The Shawshank Redemption is a 1994 American drama film written and directed by Frank Darabont and starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman....

(1994)
Geri's Game
Geri's Game
Geri's Game is a five-minute animated short film made by Pixar in 1997, written and directed by Jan Pinkava. It was the first Pixar Short created after Toy Story, the previous short being Knick Knack in 1989....

(1997), an animated short film about a man who adopts two personalities to play chess with himself
The Luzhin Defence
The Luzhin Defence
The Luzhin Defence is a 2000 film directed by Marleen Gorris, starring John Turturro and Emily Watson. The film centres on a mentally tormented chess grandmaster and the young woman he meets while competing at a world-class tournament in Italy...

(2000), based on the Nabokov's book The Defense mentioned above
X-Men
X-Men (film)
X-Men is a 2000 superhero film based on the fictional Marvel Comics characters of the same name. Directed by Bryan Singer, the film stars Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman, Ian McKellen, Anna Paquin, Famke Janssen, Bruce Davison, James Marsden, Halle Berry, Rebecca Romijn, Ray Park and Tyler Mane...

(2000) and X-Men: The Last Stand
X-Men: The Last Stand
X-Men: The Last Stand is a 2006 superhero film and the third in the X-Men series. It was directed by Brett Ratner and stars an ensemble cast including Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Kelsey Grammer, Anna Paquin, Shawn Ashmore, Aaron Stanford, Vinnie Jones,...

(2006)
The Chronicles of Riddick
The Chronicles of Riddick
The Chronicles of Riddick is a 2004 American science fiction film which follows the adventures of Richard B. Riddick, as he attempts to elude capture after the events depicted in the 2000 film Pitch Black, and details his meeting with Jack and Imam, his escape from the prison planet Crematoria, and...

(2004) briefly features prison guards playing chess against mercenaries, using live ammunition for pieces
Knights of the South Bronx
Knights of the South Bronx
Knights of the South Bronx is a 2005 TV film about a teacher who helps students at a tough inner-city school to succeed by teaching them to play chess.-Plot summary:...

(2005), about a teacher who helps students at a tough inner-city school to succeed by teaching them to play chess
Revolver (2005)
Queen to Play
Queen to Play
Queen to Play is a 2009 French-German film directed by Caroline Bottaro. The film is distributed in the U.S. by Zeitgeist Films.-Synopsis:...

(2009)
Bobby Fischer
Bobby Fischer
Robert James "Bobby" Fischer was an American chess Grandmaster and the 11th World Chess Champion. He is widely considered one of the greatest chess players of all time. Fischer was also a best-selling chess author...

Against the World (2011) An HBO original documentary directed by Liz Garbus premiered on June 6, 2011. The ninety-minute documentary explores the complex life of the troubled genius.

Series

Noggin the Nog
Noggin the Nog
Noggin the Nog is a popular British children's character appearing in his own TV series and series of illustrated books, the brainchild of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. The TV series is considered a 'cult classic' from the golden age of British children's television...

series. The characters' design is inspired by the Lewis chessmen
Lewis chessmen
The Lewis Chessmen are a group of 78 12th-century chess pieces, most of which are carved in walrus ivory...
Several episodes of the Star Trek
Star Trek
Star Trek is an American science fiction entertainment franchise created by Gene Roddenberry. The core of Star Trek is its six television series: The Original Series, The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise...

series (since 1966) features a Tri-Dimensional chess variant
The Prisoner
The Prisoner
The Prisoner is a 17-episode British television series first broadcast in the UK from 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968. Starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan, it combined spy fiction with elements of science fiction, allegory and psychological drama.The series follows a British former...

(1967–1968) features outdoor chess using people as pieces
Land of the Giants
Land of the Giants
Land of the Giants was an hour-long American science fiction television program lasting two seasons beginning on September 22, 1968 and ending on March 22, 1970. The show was created and produced by Irwin Allen. Land of the Giants was the fourth of Allen's science fiction TV series. The show was...

(1968–1970). The season two episode "Deadly Pawn" features the castaways as chess pieces in a game for their lives.
Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

serial The Curse of Fenric
The Curse of Fenric
The Curse of Fenric is a serial in the British science fiction television series Doctor Who, which was first broadcast in four weekly parts from 25 October to 15 November 1989...

(1989) features chess as a theme, both the physical game and as a metaphor for the events of the story.
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper , of the murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer...

(1990–1991)
The X-Files
The X-Files
The X-Files is an American science fiction television series and a part of The X-Files franchise, created by screenwriter Chris Carter. The program originally aired from to . The show was a hit for the Fox network, and its characters and slogans became popular culture touchstones in the 1990s...

series, in "The End
The End (The X-Files)
"The End" is the 20th episode of the fifth season, and 117th overall of the science fiction television series The X-Files. The episode first aired in the United States and Canada on May 17, 1998. "The End" subsequently aired in the United Kingdom, Ireland and was eventually released for broadcast...

" episode (1998)
Last Exile
Last Exile
is a Japanese animated television series created by Gonzo. It featured a production team led by director Koichi Chigira, character designer Range Murata, and production designer Mahiro Maeda. The three had previously worked together in Blue Submarine No. 6, one of the first CG anime series...

(2003), an anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....

series. All the episodes are named after chess-related terms (see the list of episodes)
Code Geass (2006–2007), an anime series
"The Jerk" (2007), episode of House
House (TV series)
House is an American television medical drama that debuted on the Fox network on November 16, 2004. The show's central character is Dr. Gregory House , an unconventional and misanthropic medical genius who heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in...

, about a prodigy with behavioral problems
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008–2009) – the origin of the Skynet
SkyNET
SkyNET, known as The Terminator: SkyNET in Europe, is a computer game based on the Terminator film series. It was originally an expansion, and became the sequel to The Terminator: Future Shock, also developed by Bethesda Softworks....

organization is a computer chess program; chess tournament is featured in season one episodes
Law and Order: Special Victims Unit series, in the "Hothouse" episode of season ten
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (season 10)
This article contains a list of episodes for season 10 of the television series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.-Cast:*Christopher Meloni as Det. Elliot Stabler*Mariska Hargitay as Det. Olivia Benson*Richard Belzer as Sgt. John Munch...

(2009), in which a young genius is seen obsessing over a chess game
The Wire
The WIRE
the WIRE is the student-run College radio station at the University of Oklahoma, broadcasting in a freeform format. The WIRE serves the University of Oklahoma and surrounding communities, and is staffed by student DJs. The WIRE broadcasts at 1710 kHz AM in Norman, Oklahoma...

, Dee uses the game of chess to explain the drug trade to Bodie and Wallace.

In painting

I Giocatori di Scacchi (The Chess Players) (c.1590) by Ludovico Carracci
Ludovico Carracci
Ludovico Carracci was an Italian, early-Baroque painter, etcher, and printmaker born in Bologna....
Arabes jouant aux échecs (Arabs Playing Chess) (1847) by Eugène Delacroix
Eugène Delacroix
Ferdinand Victor Eugène Delacroix was a French Romantic artist regarded from the outset of his career as the leader of the French Romantic school...
Les Joueurs d'échecs (The Chess Players) (1863) by Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier
Honoré Daumier was a French printmaker, caricaturist, painter, and sculptor, whose many works offer commentary on social and political life in France in the 19th century....
The Chess Players (1876) by Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins
Thomas Cowperthwait Eakins was an American realist painter, photographer, sculptor, and fine arts educator...
La famille du peintre (1911) by Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
Portrait de joueurs d'echecs (Portrait of Chess Players) (1911) by Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
Femme à côté d'un échiquier (1928) by Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse
Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...
Super Chess (1937) by Paul Klee
Paul Klee
Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

Other

Checkmate
Checkmate (Bliss)
Checkmate is a one act ballet created by the choreographer Ninette de Valois and composer Arthur Bliss. The idea for the ballet was proposed by Bliss, and subsequently produced by de Valois for the Vic-Wells Ballet. It was first performed on 15 June 1937 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, Paris...

, a ballet by the composer Arthur Bliss
Arthur Bliss
‎Sir Arthur Edward Drummond Bliss, CH, KCVO was an English composer and conductor.Bliss's musical training was cut short by the First World War, in which he served with distinction in the army...
Chess
Chess (musical)
Chess is a musical with music by Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, formerly of ABBA, and with lyrics by Tim Rice. The story involves a romantic triangle between two top players, an American and a Russian, in a world chess championship, and a woman who manages one and falls in love with the other;...

, a musical by Tim Rice
Tim Rice
Sir Timothy Miles Bindon "Tim" Rice is an British lyricist and author.An Academy Award, Golden Globe Award, Tony Award and Grammy Award-winning lyricist, Rice is best known for his collaborations with Andrew Lloyd Webber, with whom he wrote Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, Jesus...

and Björn Ulvaeus
Björn Ulvaeus
Björn Kristian Ulvaeus is a Swedish songwriter, composer, musician, writer, producer, a former member of the Swedish musical group ABBA , and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia!...

and Benny Andersson
Benny Andersson
Göran Bror "Benny" Andersson is a Swedish musician, composer, a former member of the Swedish musical group ABBA , and co-composer of the musicals Chess, Kristina från Duvemåla, and Mamma Mia!...

of ABBA
ABBA
ABBA was a Swedish pop group formed in Stockholm in 1970 which consisted of Anni-Frid Lyngstad, Björn Ulvaeus, Benny Andersson and Agnetha Fältskog...

External links

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