Zugzwang

Zugzwang /zoog zwang/ n A chess term used to describe a position in which a player is reduced to a state of utter helplessness; he is obliged to move, but every move serves only to make his position worse

St Petersburg, 1914- imposing and shabby, monumental and squalid - and seething with plots and secret allegiances. On a blustery April day O. V. Gulko, a respected newspaper editor is murdered in front of a shocked crowd. Five days later Dr Otto Spethman, famous psychoanalyst, receives a visit from the police. There has been another murder in the city - and somehow he is implicated. He is mystified - and deeply worried, as much for his young, spirited daughter as for himself. He is preoccupied, too, by two new patients- Anna Petrovna, the society beauty plagued with nightmares, with whom he is steadily and inappropriately falling in love, and troubled chess master Rozental, due to take part in the imminent, spectacular St Petersburg chess tournament - but on the verge of a complete breakdown.

With the city rife with speculation and alarm, Spethmann broods over his own chessboard, its pieces frozen mid-battle, and contemplates the many forces - political, historical, sexual - that are holding him in their grasp ...