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A Story of Life, Chess, and One Extraordinary Girl's Dream of Becoming a Grandmaster
Scribner
October 2012
On Sale: October 9, 2012
232 pages
ISBN: 1451657811
EAN: 9781451657814
Kindle: B007EE4M90
Hardcover / e-Book
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Non-Fiction Biography
Based on a popular ESPN magazine article selected by Dave Eggers for The Best American Nonrequired Reading and a finalist for a National Magazine Award, the inspiring true story of Phiona Mutesi, a teenage chess prodigy from the slums of Kampala, Uganda. PHIONA MUTESI sleeps in a decrepit shack with her mother and three siblings and struggles to find a single meal each day. Phiona has been out of school most of her life because her mother cannot afford it, so she is only now learning to read and write. Phiona Mutesi is also one of the best chess players in the world. One day in 2005, while searching for food, nine-year-old Phiona followed her brother to a dusty veranda where she met Robert Katende, who had also grown up in the Kampala slums. Katende, a war refugee turned missionary, had an improbable dream: to empower kids through chessβa game so foreign there is no word for it in their native language. Laying a chessboard in the dirt of the Katwe slum, Robert painstakingly taught the game each day. When he left at night, slum kids played on with bottlecaps on scraps of cardboard. At first they came for a free bowl of porridge, but many grew to love chess, a game thatβlike their daily livesβmeans persevering against great obstacles. Of these kids, one stood out as an immense talent: Phiona. By the age of eleven Phiona was her countryβs junior champion and at fifteen, the national champion. In September 2010, she traveled to Siberia, a rare journey out of Katwe, to compete in the Chess Olympiad, the worldβs most prestigious team-chess event. Phionaβs dream is to one day become a Grandmaster, the most elite title in chess. But to reach that goal, she must grapple with everyday life in one of the worldβs most unstable countries, a place where girls are taught to be mothers, not dreamers, and the threats of AIDS, kidnapping, and starvation loom over the people. Like Katherine Booβs Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Gayle Tzemach Lemmonβs The Dressmaker of Khair Khana, The Queen of Katwe is an intimate and heartrending portrait of human life on the poor fringes of the twenty-first century.
 Media BuzzTalk of the Nation - December 31, 2012
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