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The Queen of Katwe: One Girl's…
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The Queen of Katwe: One Girl's Triumphant Path to Becoming a Chess Champion (edition 2016)

by Tim Crothers (Author)

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2681498,397 (3.77)14
Biography & Autobiography. Games. History. Nonfiction. HTML:

In The Queen of Katwe, sports journalist Tim Crothers introduces listeners to Phiona, a chess prodigy living in Katwe, a slum in Kampala, Uganda. Most girls her age already have children, but Phiona has a dream â?? she wants to be a chess grandmaster. Recounting her day-to-day struggles, Crothers captures the drama of Phiona's international competitions and her rise as Uganda's national champion.… (more)

Member:jennybooks
Title:The Queen of Katwe: One Girl's Triumphant Path to Becoming a Chess Champion
Authors:Tim Crothers (Author)
Info:Scribner (2016), Edition: Media Tie-In, 256 pages
Collections:Your library
Rating:****1/2
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The Queen of Katwe: One Girl's Triumphant Path to Becoming a Chess Champion by Tim Crothers

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A very good story well worth reading. Given the chance to involving herself in something outside surviving, Phiona Mutesi who had only known life in the slum of Katwe outside Kampala joins a group to play chess and proves that she has, along with her brothers, real talent and perseverance in playing chess. Against all odds she pushes herself to be come an excellent player and begins to extract herself from the slums.
  David-Block | Jan 28, 2021 |
I'm going to steal from A.O. Scott's review of the movie (I have yet to see):

“Irresistible” is one of those adjectives that critics should handle with utmost care. No matter how universally charming or winning a movie or a performance might seem to be, there is always a chance that somebody, somewhere, will be able to resist it. For all I know that may be the case with “Queen of Katwe,” but if there is anyone out there capable of remaining unmoved by this true-life triumph-of-the-underdog sports story, I don’t think I want to meet that person.


This is a terrific story - inspiring and amazing. ( )
1 vote mrklingon | Apr 22, 2019 |
I was very engrossed by the stories told in this book. At first I was a bit confused by all the different people and their back stories but it helped me to see how universal poverty and despair are in the slums of Katwe and how unbelievable it seems to try and do anything besides daily survival. I think that it is a wonderful illustration of how one person can affect another who helps someone else and eventually many people are given tools to help many others. Maybe some of the complaints I've read in other reviews of this book come because it is not a neatly tied up ending, but that's because this book is more like a prequel or even a prologue for the potential to come. The events in this book are still playing out. ( )
1 vote wrightja2000 | Sep 6, 2018 |
Very interesting to see the living conditions and culture in Africa. ( )
  EvaW | Jul 5, 2017 |
The story of Phionia Mutesi is absolutely as astonishing and incredible as the blurbs on the cover promise. The first 9 chapters of this book were difficult to put down. I needed to learn how this young woman managed to master such a difficult game.

But the last 2 chapters were unfortunately a bit tedious, explaining what we already knew by then -- that this girl faced immensely difficult hurdles, and that she dreamed of continuing her journey, despite those hurdles. The contents of these chapters would have been better sprinkled through the others. ( )
  sdunford | Oct 20, 2016 |
Showing 1-5 of 14 (next | show all)
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Epigraph
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To Atticus and Sawyer,
the children of Uganda and beyond
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She wins the decisive game, but she has no idea what it means. (Prologue)
She had no other choice.
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
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This work has been published with several different subtitles.
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Biography & Autobiography. Games. History. Nonfiction. HTML:

In The Queen of Katwe, sports journalist Tim Crothers introduces listeners to Phiona, a chess prodigy living in Katwe, a slum in Kampala, Uganda. Most girls her age already have children, but Phiona has a dream â?? she wants to be a chess grandmaster. Recounting her day-to-day struggles, Crothers captures the drama of Phiona's international competitions and her rise as Uganda's national champion.

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PHIONA MUTESI sleeps in a decrepit shack with her mother and three siblings and struggles to find a single meal each day. Phiona has been out of school most of her life because her mother cannot afford it, so she is only now learning to read and write. Phiona Mutesi is also one of the best chess players in the world.

One day in 2005, while searching for food, nine-year-old Phiona followed her brother to a dusty veranda where she met Robert Katende, who had also grown up in the Kampala slums. Katende, a war refugee turned missionary, had an improbable dream: to empower kids through chess—a game so foreign there is no word for it in their native language. Laying a chessboard in the dirt of the Katwe slum, Robert painstakingly taught the game each day. When he left at night, slum kids played on with bottlecaps on scraps of cardboard. At first they came for a free bowl of porridge, but many grew to love chess, a game that—like their daily lives—means persevering against great obstacles. Of these kids, one stood out as an immense talent: Phiona.

By the age of eleven Phiona was her country’s junior champion and at fifteen, the national champion. In September 2010, she traveled to Siberia, a rare journey out of Katwe, to compete in the Chess Olympiad, the world’s most prestigious team-chess event. Phiona’s dream is to one day become a Grandmaster, the most elite title in chess. But to reach that goal, she must grapple with everyday life in one of the world’s most unstable countries, a place where girls are taught to be mothers, not dreamers, and the threats of AIDS, kidnapping, and starvation loom over the people.
[retrieved 11/08/2012 from Amazon.com]
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