Lost in the Game of Chess

• The Defense 
• by Vladimir Nabokov

“The recollection also came back empty, and for the first time in all his life, perhaps, Luzhin asked himself the question – where exactly had it all gone, what had become of his childhood, whither had the veranda floated, whither, rustling through the bushes, had the familiar paths crept away?”   ― Vladimir Nabokov, The Defense

The story centers on Luzhin, a melancholy, lonesome ten-year-old boy at the start of the book, spending the final days of summer at the family's country home outside of St. Petersburg. His father just broke the bad news that he must start school when they get back to town. He despises going to school. He only has any passion for his attractive young aunt, who turns out to be his father's mistress. On the same day that his mother discovers the affair, she teaches young Luzhin how to play chess. He rapidly becomes a prodigy making his debut in front of the public the following summer.

Dropping out of school, Luzhin devotes himself exclusively to chess until he falls ill. During a prolonged recuperation, he resides in a German health resort where, by chance, a major international chess tournament is being held. Luzhin’s career is launched. In the space of one paragraph, sixteen years passes, and Luzhin is still at the same spa, speaking to his future bride-to-be. At age 30, Luzhin hasn't changed much socially from the melancholy, reserved boy he was as a child. In the intervening years, a Svengali-like chess promoter named Valentinov has been in charge of managing his young prodigy's career. Now that he must compete in a significant competition, Luzhin has traveled to the resort to get ready. He leaves for his tournament in Berlin, the city where his fiancee's horrified parents reside, after an odd romance.

Luzhin plays superbly, moving on to the last round against Turati, whose original opening move he has developed a new defensive for. (He had previously fallen to Turati in a match.) Luzhin spends his evenings at the tacky house of his fiancée's philistine parents. As the days go by, Luzhin, who at best has a shaky hold of reality, loses himself more and more in the chess patterns he imposes on his surroundings. The initial move against which Luzhin had created his unique defense is absent when the final match versus Turati starts. Luzhin is so immersed in the world of chess that he cannot return to reality. He hears a voice say, "Go home," as the game ends for the night.

The denouement that follows is as fascinating as the narrative that precedes it, while Nabokov's novel ends with a strange vision of eternity. This was the third of Nabokov's first ten novels originally written in Russian. It is one of his best.