Queen's Move (A Memoir)

The extraordinary, inspiring, and utterly enthralling memoir of the legendary grandmaster Judit Polgar, the greatest female chess player of all time

In 1976, Judit Polgar was born in communist Hungary. Her family did not have much money, and her father had unconventional ideas about education and about the nature genius. He believed genius was entirely the product of nurture. Nature had nothing to do with it. Determined to prove his theory, he embarked on a mission to raise his daughters—Sofia, Susan, and Judit—as chess prodigies. And so Judit spent her childhood in a small Budapest apartment, which became an improvised experimental laboratory dedicated entirely to her chess education.

The experiment was a success. With intensive, focused training, Judit, along with her sisters, climbed to the top of the brutal, male-dominated world of elite chess. But Judit’s rise and her brilliance had no precedent. Astonishingly, at the age of 15 years and 4 months, she broke Bobby Fischer’s record to become the youngest chess grandmaster ever. Judit would go on to be the number one ranked woman in the sport from 1989 to 2015. During her astonishing, singular career, she faced off on more than one occasion with Gary Kasparov, then the world-champion. Like many male chess players, Kasparov also held deeply sexist views, once remarking that, “women, by their nature, are not great chess players. They are not great fighters.” When Judit beat him, and Kasparov was forced to reconsider. He was not the only one. In her long, illustrious, adventurous career, Judit would go on to beat eleven other world champions, including Magnus Carlsen.

Judit’s story of brilliance and great achievement under immense pressure has almost no parallel. Not just in chess but in any sport or professional domain for that matter. Much has been said about Judit and her family—including in the recent Netflix documentary Queen of Chess—but never has she herself told the full story of her extreme but ultimately joyful childhood and family life. Polgar is today also a mother, commentator, celebrated educator, and grandee in the world of chess and beyond. Queen’s Move is a memoir destined to be read for generations—not just as one of the great books about the fascinating and virtuoso world of professional chess, but as a heroic story of one woman's resilience and triumph.