One might think that this book wouldn't measure up due to recent, high-profile, game collections by Shirov and Anand. One might think that a games collection with only 40 annotated games is a complete rip-off. One might think (if you're from the old male school) that a book about women's chess is best ignored. One might even think that a bio about a 28 year-old chess playing female would prove to be anything but interesting. Yes, one might easily think these thoughts; but if you did you'd be missing one of the most refreshing, fun to read chess books to appear in years.

Xie Jun, for those that don't know of her, startled everyone by breaking the Soviet's domination of the woman's world title in 1991. Her success was shocking for several reasons: Asian players (especially Asian female players) had never shown much aptitude (or interest) in chess before that time; She was just turning 21; She had beaten Maya Chiburdanidze, one of the finest female players of all time; She had not shown herself to be a dominating player before this match; And last, but not least, she had not been given any high-quality help-most of her success had been gained by force of her considerable will-power.

I read this book from cover to cover in one day simply because I couldn't put it down. Her games are interesting and deeply annotated, but I'd look at Karpov's collection if I wanted examples of super class. It's the many mistakes that make this so special. By pointing out the errors that crop up over and over, the games become humanized and accessible to players of all strengths (after all, how many of us are ever going to play like, or even understand the games of Karpov, Kasparov, Anand, Shirov or Kramnik?). Her notes are honest, telling us what she missed, what she simply didn't understand, and what she learned from each particular contest. It's this honesty that sets Chess Champion From China apart from most other collections of games.

Though Xie Jun offers up several losses and many draws, the real meat of the book is her continuing biographical accounts of her progress up and down the chess ladder. She tells us how she learned to play, how she improved, how she almost quit, and how she stormed the world of women's chess in a way that nobody could have predicted. Along the way we see huge cultural differences between the Chinese and Europeans (the simple fact that Western food always seemed to make her sick highlighted this nicely), her joys and pains, her insistence that she turned into a "profound thinker" (I can only hope that there was a language problem here, or are we witnessing the birth of a female Kant or Kierkegaard?), her constant illnesses (only the very best players have excuses for all occasions, no wonder she won the World Championship!), and her respect (at times bordering on deification) for other players.

The fact that she offered herself up emotionally, and showed her love of family in no uncertain terms (which means she's either a really sweet girl or simply switching to a career in politics), made the book more real to me than other "chess is life" tomes that I've been forced to read. By the time she runs into the classless, egocentric, ignorant and power-hungry chess organizer/millionaire Luis Rentero (the insults are mine), you want to protect the poor girl by putting the bastard in stocks and pelting him with rotten fruit.

Though her English could have been polished, her sincerity-and her ability to address real life issues along with the chess-makes this a must buy for any lover of chess lore.

Highly recommended!

YOU CAN FIND THIS BOOK AT