The game of life and death

As the century draws to a close, the horror of the second World War continues to preoccupy fiction writers. In many ways, it could be argued, this is important; writers are determined to keep the memory of the evil alive in order to teach or, perhaps, consolidate an essential lesson. Such an observation may sound simplistic, given the fact that no amount of shocking novels have succeeded in putting an end to war. While one cannot dispute that powerful, lasting literature has been created out of the experience of war, it must also be said that this enduring theme has been exploited by novelists.

Many mediocre novels have acquired a literary status beyond their merits because of their subject. No aspect of the second World War has been as much written about as the extermination of Europe's Jews. Critical reactions vary, however. In Canadian poet Anne Michaels's vastly overrated novel Fugitive Pieces, the theme seemed a laboured attempt to confer structure on a rambling narrative. Martin Amis, a social satirist whose gift is for style rather than storytelling, was critically denounced when his novel Time's Arrow was published in 1990. In that novel, a far better, more thoughtful book than many critics were prepared to concede, he attempted to tell the death camp narrative by running time in reverse. It was as if Amis, better known for comedy, had no right to tackle a subject beyond his experience. No one, however, challenged Anne Michaels or her right to the material.

From the publication of If This Is a Man, Primo Levi made the story of the Italian Jews his own, as subsequent works confirmed. As a writer he was obsessed by the story and in a way it is the one he told over and over again. But it was also his experience. Just as it is difficult to read a contemporary American novel without some character making a reference to the day Kennedy was shot, many European and indeed American novels, particularly those written by Jewish writers of European extract, return time and again to the subject of the Holocaust.

When fiction draws so heavily on fact and history, where exactly does fiction end and "faction" take over? Take Thomas Ken neally's the 1982 Booker Prizewinning Schlindler's Ark (renamed Schindler's List because of the movie). It is a powerful book, but just as it divided the Booker jury as to whether it was fiction or faction, readers continue to read this work of fiction as the history it undoubtedly is. Kenneally did not engage in linguistic or stylistic experimentation; D.M. Thomas's The White Hotel (1981) outraged many precisely because of the way he played with the horrors of history in a book which claimed to be fiction.

Paolo Maurensig's debut The Luneburg Variation, translated by Jon Rothschild (Phoenix House, £12.99 in UK), initially seems yet another clever, "European" novel: the opening sentence - reproduced on the cover - could also be read as a warning of precisely such cleverness: "They say that chess was born in bloodshed." From the outset, then, it is obvious that Maurensig is determined to use chess as a metaphor for war and is also planning on juxtaposing the two. The use of an unseen narrator also adds to the heavy-handedness of a novel which has huge ambitions, particularly in the area of profundity.

The facts of Dieter Frisch's death are shocking - or are they? Maurensig attempts to confer some depth of character on to a figure who is obviously a symbol by giving him an ordered if highpowered existence which allows him to move between his grand house and silent wife in Vienna, and Munich, where his office and mistress are located. Dieter is also with chess, to the point that his dead body is found sprawled across a giant marble chessboard. Although the device would belong quite easily in the world of Agatha Christie, it is obvious from the tone alone that Maurensig's ambitions extend far beyond Christie's kind of thriller writing.

Most of the dialogue is so dry, the characters have been inspired by robots. At no time does the narrative engage. At one point Dieter is asked about a chess master, international chess referee and editor of a magazine, whom he may or may not have met. "Tabori? Never heard of him. The name is probably as fake as the man. The world of chess is unfortunately peopled by the oddest individuals. It's always been that way, though there was a time when the game enjoyed greater, let's say, formal respect." The plot, such as it is, is tediously structured around an encounter on a train, when Dieter, accompanied by a friend who regularly travels with him for part of the journey, is joined by a man with a story to tell.

Who could be surprised when the young man turns out to be another chess obsessive? "It was as a child that I became fascinated with chess," he begins, "I learned the first moves from my father, who was a talented amateur . . . but both my parents were killed in an automobile accident when I was six." The author tries desperately to create a sense of mystery which fails because of the dullness of the story. It defies belief that the two strangers would have listened to such a story, the first instalment of which, of course, is brought to a close with a suitably dramatic event: "A terrible shock sprang from the silvery head of that horse, shooting through my arm to the rest of my body and driving to my feet with a shout. My chair spilled to the floor." The young man's narrative is long drawn out and leads towards an utterly predictable conclusion.

The translation may be at fault here. However, there is only so much blame which may be laid on a translation. The book is lifeless, and also pretentious. The quality of the ideas contained within it have been praised by Italian reviewers. Yet none of the ideas or images is particularly original. Chess, like music and mathematics, has often provided novelists with an intellectual dimension to add to a narrative. It fails to do so here. Maurensig neither engages on an intellectual or an emotional level. Considering the seriousness of his theme, that of a man playing chess in exchange for lives, the failure extends far beyond that of mere artistic limitation. If it achieves nothing else, however, perhaps a work such as this may alert us to the moral doubtfulness of novelists persistently exploiting one of history's ugliest stories.