From EEG, a novel that will be published next month by New Directions. Drndić (1946–2018) was an author and playwright. EEG is her final work. Translated from the Croatian by Celia Hawkesworth.
It’s dangerous to play too much chess. Chess players say nothing and calculate, they plan annihilation, attacks and defenses on their fields, visible and invisible, sometimes bloody stories develop, terrible slaughter and underhand trickery. Too much chess drives some people mad. That’s okay, says Nabokov, there’s nothing abnormal about the fact that chess players are abnormal. It’s completely normal.
Even before he used a razor to slit the…