Robert Löhr Der Schachautomat The Mechanical Turk Piper Verlag GmbH, August 2005, 416 pp. ISBN 3-492-04796-3 Based on the remarkable true story of Wolfgang von Kempelen and his ‘Chess Automaton’, which wowed the world of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the latter part of the eighteenth century, Robert Löhr – screenwriter, playwright, puppeteer and first-time novelist – has brought to life in exquisite detail and with irresistible joie de vivre a story to rival Patrick Süskind’s Perfume or Carlos Ruis Zafón’s The Shadow of the Wind. Like them it draws its readers into the heady atmosphere of its chosen scene. Here was a world of elegance and coarseness, powdered wigs and filthy taverns, scientific advances, and, not least, new inventions. And as Wolfgang von Kempelen, provincial administrator and would-be fulltime inventor, pulls the drape from his ‘Automatic Turk’, he knows that his hour has arrived. There sits the Turk, proud and handsome in a cold, cruel way, his eyes made of glass yet seemingly able to direct a penetrating gaze at his opponent at the chessboard. For what differentiates von Kempelen’s creation from those devised by others is, as he boasts, that it is a thinking automaton, and one that will challenge any human being to a game of chess – and win. Astonishing, incredible, impossible? Yes and no. For inside the machine sits one Tibor Scardanelli, a dwarf lately released from a Venetian prison and a chess player of genius. The story opens as an elegant gentleman is shown into Tibor’s cell and his partnership with von Kempelen begins. It is a life of secrecy that must now be led, for no one must guess the secret behind the automaton’s success. It is also Tibor’s ticket to worlds he would never have known, from court life to outings with Kempelen’s amiable assistant, a Jew named Jakob, on business that Tibor, a religious man at heart, knows that Our Lady would hardly condone. Meanwhile the Turk’s success is spinning out of control. Will disaster now strike? The grand finale is tremendous. Along with all the book’s other thrills and delights, here also is some really fine writing about chess, comparable in quality to Stefan Zweig’s The Royal Game. Süskind, Zafón, Zweig… Löhr has joined the ranks of those whose works will cross frontiers. What, one wonders, will he try his hand at next?