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PLOT SUMMARY The plot concerns the titular character, Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin. As a boy, he is considered unattractive, withdrawn, and an object of ridicule by his classmates. One day, when a guest comes to his father's party, he is asked whether he knows how to play Chess . Embarrassed, he says no, but this encounter serves as his motivation to pick up chess. He skips school and visits his aunt's house to learn the basics. He quickly becomes a great player, enrolling in local competitions and rising up as a chess player. His talent is prodigious and he rises up to the level of International Grandmaster in less then ten years. Things turn for the worst when he is pitted against Turati, a grandmaster from Italy , in a competition to determine the world champion. Right before the game, he has an enormous nervous breakdown. His strategy of building up the defense against Turati has failed, and what follows for the rest of the novel is the way Luzhin reconciles his past with his present. After the breakdown, he tries to not think about chess, but he cannot avoid encounters with chess: newspaper clippings, guests, and encounters on the street somehow bring up chess in his mind. At the end of the novel, Luzhin cannot take things anymore, and he decides to end his life. He enters the closet in his house, breaks down the window, and falls down to his death. The last line of the novel reads: "The door was burst in. 'Aleksandr Ivanovich, Aleksandr Ivanovich,' roared several voices. But there was no Aleksandr Ivanovich." MAJOR CHARACTERS Aleksandr Ivanovich Luzhin - the protagonist of the novel. He is mistreated as a child and is generally sullen in complexion and demeanor. He has no friends. He has a nervous breakdown before his match with the Italian grandmaster Turati. Natalia Katkov - she marries Luzhin. She is the only female who Luzhin ever encountered. She marries him after much protest from her mother and father. Leo Valentinov - a decent chess player and confidence man who manages Luzhin's career for more than a decade, is also at the resort hoping to break Luzhin's concentration in favor of the Italian champion Turati. Turati - The Italian grandmaster of chess. Luzhin has a nervous breakdown midway through the game with Turati. Oleg Sergeyevich Smirnovski - theosophist and proprietor of a liquor factory, he plays a minor role in Luzhin's affairs. TRIVIA Nabokov said of this novel: "Of all my Russian books, The Defense contains and diffuses the greatest "warmth" - which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract chess is supposed to be." Nabokov later described this novel as the "story of a chess player who was crushed by his genius" SEE ALSO
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