Safe Return Doubtful

After staying for a few months at the Hotel do Parque in Estoril, Portugal, world chess champion Alexander Alekhine was found mysteriously dead in his room on March 24, 1946. He was soon to play a title match against Russian challenger, Botvinnik, the cause of death was not clear, and speculation as to foul play ensued.
Maurensig’s excellent novel tells of an author (not necesarilly himself) writing a novel about the last years of Alekhine’s life, but he is searching for an ending, and so travels to the hotel in Estoril.
The novel works so well because it is only partly a psychological thriller. There are wonderful passages as Alekhine befriends a Jewish violinist, the only other guest at the hotel, and they discuss art and talent, Alekhine claims his chess skill to be on par with Neumann’s prowess,
<blockquote>All the arts share a common effort to dominate matter, to bring order to chaos, technique comes to our aid to perform that task, but beyond that there is an additional factor that enables a work to rise to the level of art, chess must come to grips with a magmatic mass that is constantly evolving</blockquote>
This is the time of the Nuremburg Trials, photos of Alekhine with Goebbels and other leading members of the Nazi party come to light. Rumours circulate that he could be a Nazi sympathiser and a racist, an anti-semite.
It is therefore a novel far greater than the initial suggested metaphor of life as a chess game. It is a work of fiction, yet an in-depth overview of Alekhine’s fascinating life.
<blockquote>In a novel you can say things that in other contexts would be forbidden. Then again, perhaps only the imaginationallows us to arrive at certain hidden truths.</blockquote> says Maurensig’s ‘writer’.
So yes, the novel does have an ending, and its a damn good one.