Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Feb 2014
240 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
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.
"Starred Review. Daniel learns something about the nature of competition and the values he and his father need to hold dearest in this emotionally taut story. Ages 12–up." - Publishers Weekly
"This book is smart, real, and full of feeling." - School Library Journal
"The paint-by-numbers plot and unimaginative dialogue are unlikely to encourage anyone but the most die-hard chess aficionado to finish this rote problem novel. Fiction. 11-15." - Kirkus
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in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
David Klass, an acclaimed screenwriter and the author of many popular YA novels, was a competitive chess tournament player in the post–Bobby Fischer era. He gave up the game at nineteen and only returned to it decades later, when his two children began to play in school tournaments. He lives in New York City.
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