By Paco Cerdà
Translated by Kevin Gerry Dunn
Publication Date: June 10th, 2025
A tense examination of early Cold War anxieties, examined through the famous chess match between Spanish Arturito Pomar and American Bobby Fischer.
Paperback ISBN: 9781646053780
eBook ISBN: 9781646053919
Description
In this gripping historical saga, award-winning Spanish writer Paco Cerdà explores early Cold War anxieties through the lens of a famous chess match.
Stockholm, 1962. Spain’s first chess grandmaster, Arturito Pomar, faces off against eighteen-year-old American prodigy Bobby Fischer in a match that will become the stuff of legend, not so much for how it ends but for what it symbolizes. Shuttling back and forth across decades between the United States, Spain, the Soviet Union, and beyond, The Pawn tracks the careers of the two chess masters, expertly examining the geopolitical anxieties that pervaded the 1960s and went on to shape these men’s lives.
Perfect for fans of The Storm We Made and The Queen’s Gambit, The Pawn explores the contentious shadow layers between game and politic, match and war, pawn and political tool. In this empathetic, incisive rendering, Cerdà “presents both players as among the many exceptional people whose lives were sacrificed on the altar of Cold War interests” (The New York Times).
Biographical Note
Paco Cerdà is a journalist and writer. He is the author of multiple award-winning books. The Pawn is the first book of his to be translated into English.
Kevin Gerry Dunn is a Spanish/English translator and a ghostwriter. His translations include The Tyranny of Flies by Elaine Vilar Madruga, Easy Reading by Cristina Morales, and works by Paul B. Preciado, María Bastarós, Daniela Tarazona, and Ousman Umar. He has received an English PEN Award, a PEN/Heim Grant, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.
Praise
"There are books that one would like to have written and this is one of them."―Julio Llamazares
"An excellent book, perhaps one of the best, most compact and with the greatest personality of its own, among those written in Spain in recent times." —Manuel Hidalgo, El Cultural
"I have enjoyed this book so much that I feel it is a moral obligation to recommend it." —Leontxo García, El País
"The best book of this year is El Peón by Paco Cerdà." —Voro Contreras, Levante-EMV
"An original non-fiction story, in form and content, about personal political commitment, chess and power built around a simple game." —La Vanguardia
"The Pawn brings back the life of the child prodigy of chess, Arturo Pomar, to reveal other almost forgotten figures who were fundamental in history." —Irene Morilla, La Sexta
"The sad and fabulous life of Arturo Pomar." —Federico Marín Bellón, ABC
"An essay on the pawns of Francoism and the Cold War with Arturo Pomar as the guiding thread."—Carlos Prieto, El Confidencial
"A true portrait of Franco's cheapness, of the broken and metallic sounds of No-Do, of the black and white of underdevelopment masked in the papier-mâché epic of our dictatorship." —Antonio García Maldonado, El Asombrario
"The writer crosses borders to show other great pawns who have starred in history and who were abandoned by their governments after having been used."—Javier Ors, La Razón