The Queen’s Gambit

NOW A MAJOR NETFLIX SERIES starring Anya Taylor-Joy from Academy-Award nominee Scott Frank and BAFTA nominee Allan Scott’Superb’ Time Out’Mesmerizing’ Newsweek’Gripping’ Financial Times’Sheer entertainment. It is a book I reread every few years – for the pure pleasure and skill of it’ Michael Ondaatje’Don’t pick this up if you want a night’s sleep’ ScotsmanWhen she is sent to an orphanage at the age of eight, Beth Harmon soon discovers two ways to escape her surroundings, albeit fleetingly: playing chess and taking the little green pills given to her and the other children to keep them subdued. Before long, it becomes apparent that hers is a prodigious talent, and as she progresses to the top of the US chess rankings she is able to forge a new life for herself.

But she can never quite overcome her urge to self-destruct. For Beth, there’s more at stake than merely winning and losing. ‘Few novelists have written about genius – and addiction – as acutely as Walter Tevis’ The Telegraph