Books : Queen of Katwe & Viktor Korchnoi

Several weeks ago a chess friend and I were talking about the life of Viktor Korchnoi, and my friend pointed me to a second hand copy of the Viktor Korchnoi biography, on discount. When I looked at it I also saw the book "Queen of Katwe" (both in Dutch language), and ordered them. I was happy to receive but when I started reading both books I figured that a rather difficult reading time was ahead since both book show a lot of misery and sadness. However, especially the Queen of Katwe book has moments where it can inspire the reader. It shows how a young girl in the slums of Uganda manages to persist and gets chess lessons as one of the two only girls in a group of a lot young boys, under supervision of a coach. This coach started with football in one particular slum in Uganda but discovered chess as a tool to give these young children a better future, by providing food and chess lessons, and some motivational support to try to help to increase their self esteem.

I am about half way in both books, but wanted to write something about this here.

Perhaps both books show fighting chess, both Phiona, the protagonist in the Queen of Katwe, as Viktor Korchnoi can be labeled as fighting chess, chess players.
And perhaps both books show that there is still a lot of work to do to improve people's lives, not just in the former USSR, but most of all in Africa where poverty is still at a dramatically low level.

In fact, I am getting more and more curious about the continent of Africa, because some time ago I also started reading books about the African word Ubuntu. One message in those books is more or less that the rest of the world should start to learn from Africa. After Africa has been exploited for countless years, it is now time to learn that the self centered individualistic approach of capitalism has many drawbacks and we should learn to live the Ubuntu way, which is towards a collective feeling where we keep an eye on each other, care for each other like for ourselves. "I' becomes "we".

Queen of Katwe book at the website of the author : http://www.timcrothers.net/the-queen-of-katwe.html