Grandmaster - by David Klass (Paperback)

About the Book

"A father-son chess tournament reveals the dark side of the game"--

Book Synopsis

Freshman Daniel Pratzer gets a chance to prove himself when the chess team invites him and his father to a weekend-long parent-child tournament. Daniel, thinking that his father is a novice, can't understand why his teammates want so badly for them to participate. Then he finds out the truth: as a teen, his father was one of the most promising young players in America, but the pressures of the game pushed him too far, and he had to give up chess to save his own life and sanity. Now, thirty years later, Mr. Pratzer returns to the game to face down an old competitor and the same dark demons that lurk in the corners of a mind stretched by the demands of the game. Daniel was looking for acceptance--but the secrets he uncovers about his father will force him to make some surprising moves himself, in Grandmaster by David Klass.

Review Quotes

"* Like Searching for Bobby Fischer, this novel about competitive chess encapsulates the intensity of the game and the players who become obsessed with it . . . [An] emotionally taut story." --Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Drama unfolds deliberately . . . building up to an exciting, climactic endgame . . . Smart, real, and full of feeling." --School Library Journal

"Fast-paced, inspired writing makes this perfect for fans of John Feinstein's The Sports Beat series." --Booklist

"Klass is in excellent control of his plot, moving swiftly to the tournament action . . . and steadily closing in on the final showdown." --Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

About the Author

David Klass is the author of many young adult novels, including You Don't Know Me, Losers Take All, and Grandmaster. He is also a Hollywood screenwriter, having written more than twenty-five action screenplays, including Kiss the Girls, starring Morgan Freeman and Ashley Judd; Walking Tall, starring The Rock; and Desperate Measures, starring Michael Keaton and Andy Garcia. Klass grew up in a family that loved literature and theater-his parents were both college professors and writers-but he was a reluctant reader, preferring sports to books. But he started loving the adventure stories his parents would bring home from the library-particularly Jack London, Robert Louis Stevenson and Alexandre Dumas. After his sister twice won a story contest in Seventeen magazine, Klass decided he would win it too, and when he was a senior in high school, he did, publishing his first story, "Ringtoss," in the magazine. He studied at Yale University, where he won the Veech Award for Best Imaginative Writing. He taught English in Japan, and wrote his first novel, The Atami Dragons, about that experience. He now lives in New York with his wife and two children.