nsaarea.blogg.se - The Chess Machine by Robert Löhr

I think that the fact that there’s really only one likeable character in it is a bit of a problem. There’s a lot going on in it, murder, romance of a sort and intrigue but I can’t say that I was chewing at the bit to get back to it whenever I put it down. Some are almost instantly forgotten, or just about anyway! I quite enjoyed this book and although it’s been about a week since I finished it, it’s still fresh in my mind which can’t always be said of books. He always wins and Kempelen talks Tibor into becoming the Turk’s ‘brain’ and secreting himself inside the machine whilst Kempelen and his assistant Jacob tour the major cities of Europe with it.

Tibor Scardanelli is an Italian dwarf who is an outcast with no friends and he has been earning a living by playing chess for money. So Kempelen and his assistant build an automaton in the shape of a Turk playing chess, but of course it’s just a con trick and he needs a wonderful human chess player who can fit inside the machine. But he’s very ambitious and he has the idea that if he builds a thinking machine which can play chess and beat everyone, then he will become very rich and famous and then be given lots of contracts and so make even more money. Lohr has taken the known facts about the chess machine and woven a story around them.īaron Wolfgang von Kempelen is a talented chap, in the past he has translated things for Empress Maria Theresia and has designed bridges and planned new settlements. This is Robert Lohr’s first foray into novel writing, he has been a journalist and a screenwriter previously. It’s based on a true story and it’s a historical adventure set in Vienna in 1770. ISBN 978-1-57113517-9.This book was translated into English by Anthea Bell in 2007 and was first published in German in 2005. John David Pizer (2011): Imagining the Age of Goethe in German Literature, 1970-2010.

Das Hamlet-Komplott, Piper, Munich 2010.

Das Erlkönig-Manöver, Piper, Munich 2007.

Der Schachautomat, Piper, Munich 2005.

Starting in 2005, he has written four historical novels on topics such as the chess-playing turk, the fabled Sängerkrieg and the friendship of Goethe and Schiller. He went to journalism school in Berlin and studied North American and German literature at the Free University of Berlin before attending the Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin to become a screenwriter. Robert Löhr was born in Berlin and brought up in Bremen and Santa Barbara, California. His work has been largely collected by libraries. ( The Secrets of the Chess Machine in the UK).

He is best known for his novel Der Schachautomat, translated into English by Anthea Bell as The Chess Machine. Robert Löhr (born 17 January 1973) is a German novelist and screenwriter.