Stalemate [Hardcover]

Icchokas Meras (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1980

A classic of Holocaust literature from "one of the great masters of the short novel."—The New Yorker

In the Vilna Ghetto during World War II, Nazi Commandant Schoger demands that all children be sent to the death camp. When Abraham Lipman pleads with him to spare their lives, Schoger reconsiders, and tells Lipman there will be a chess match between himself and Lipman's only surviving son, Isaac, a chess prodigy. If Isaac wins, the children will live, but Isaac will die. If Isaac loses, the children will die, but Isaac will live. Only a draw will save the ghetto from this terrible predicament.

The chess game begins: a nightmarish contest played over the course of several evenings, witnessed by an audience impotent to act, staking the lives of their children on a stalemate. This is a moving story of a father and a son who shame their cruel perpetrator with their dignity, spirit, and extraordinary courage. Stalemate speaks to the power of humor even under the direst circumstances. As a parable that gives voice to the unspeakable, Stalemate is an antidote to despair.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

SS Commandant Adolf Schroger, overseeing the Vilna Jewish ghetto, challenges 17½-year-old Isaac Lipman to a chess match with tauntingly barbarous stakes: if Isaac wins, Schroger will kill him, but all of the children in the ghetto will live; if he loses, the children will die, except for Isaac. A stalemate is thus the only desirable outcome. Isaac is his father Abraham's last surviving son; the two show love, strength and composure in the face of fear. Isaac's 16-year-old love interest, Esther, is lovely and sweet, but carrying her own already tragic past. There are many other stories, sometimes extraneous, of fathers and mothers, the missing and the dead, close friends and siblings. Born in Lithuania in 1934, Meras was hidden by a rural family during WWII; his family was murdered by the SS. In 1972, Meras emigrated to Israel, and most of his many novels center on WWII. The plot of Stalemate, out of print for 20 years, may seem hokey, but it's precisely the sort of random, ham-fisted horror that the Nazis routinely came up with, and Isaac's quest to merge cleverness and humility in all aspects of his life, under extreme duress, is winning. (Nov. 8)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 173 pages
• Publisher: Lyle Stuart (April 1980)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0818402962
• ISBN-13: 978-0818402968
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,500,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars packs a punch you wont forget, July 8, 2006

By 

lisatheratgirl "lisatheratgirl" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Stalemate: A Novel (Paperback)

The review by Karen Breda is pretty comprehensive, I dont know how much there is to add, but this short novel really impressed me. I've read a lot of books about the Holocaust, both fiction and nonfiction, and this story, told as a simple parable, is one of the most powerful. There is the story set in the Vilna ghetto and the Biblical parallel of Abraham and Isaac. The author names the father and son Abraham and Isaac. This is a book that is not to be read literally for plot, although the author apparently survived the Vilna ghetto. Atrocities committed by the Nazis are more hinted at than described, which to me makes the story more effective. I also think the author was showing people as they should act, rather than as they may actually have acted. With each chapter he raises a moral dilemma. If you are looking for a realistic story about Vilna during the Second World War, I'd say try Anya by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer. That is not the intent of this book, but it is thought provoking, comparing life to a game of chess.