A king in hiding

Título: A king in hiding
Autor: Fahim Mohammad, Sophie Le Callennec e Xavier Parmentier
Páginas: 228

Este foi o primeiro livro em inglês que li até o fim. Dadas as minhas limitações e dificuldades com o idioma, considerei o resultado satisfatório. Para estimular a leitura, escolhi um livro com uma linguagem não muito complexa e com um assunto que me agradava.

O livro conta a história de Fahim, um garoto de Bangladesh que, devido aos problemas em seu país, torna-se um refugiado político e vai viver na França com seu pai. Ali, mesmo sendo um excelente jogador de xadrez e vencendo alguns torneios, encontra dificuldade em se estabelecer legalmente no país, dependendo dos favores de muitos e sonhando o dia em que poderia ter a cidadania reconhecida.

Trechos interessantes:

"A man came up to me:
'Would you like me to teach you?'
I didn't dare disappoint him.
'Yes...', I whispered.
He went off to fetch a large wooden board, put pieces on it one by one, according to some mysterious rule, and started to explaim. I listened, but it was complicated. So I said nothing and stifled my yawns so as not to be rude." (pág. 3)

"My father explained to Nagy and Diana that we had to carry on to Madrid. They found us a bus, but it didn't go to Madri direct: it stopped in France and we would have to change in Paris. I didn't want to go to France, I didn't even want to travel through France. A friend in Bangladesh had told me that in france they eat dogs. I tried to reassure myself by thinking about Zinedine Zidane: perhaps it was eating dog that made him so good? But Zidane or no Zidane, there was no way I was going to eat dog." (pág. 35)

"Like me, my father goes to school: he has French lessons. He never misses a lesson, and is absolutely determined to learn the language in order to 'integrate'. But he makes lots of mistakes and gets his words muddled up. For instance, one lunchtime in the canteen he hears someone say:
'Bon appétit!'
So after that he says it all the time to everyone, in the lobby, on the stairs, in the garden:
'Bon appétit! Bon appétit! Bon appétit!'
He thinks it means 'hello'. It makes me laugh." (pág. 78/79)

"Xavier, tell us the story of Nimzowitsch and the cigar.
'At a tournament, Nimzowitsch's opponent rested a cigar on the edge of the chessboard. Nimzowitsch, who detested the smell of tobacco, demanded that the referee should enforce the ban on smoking. The player with the cigar protested that he hadn't lit the cigar and therefore wasn't smoking, and the referee was force to concede that he was in the right. Whereupon Nimzowitsch retorted:'You know very well that in chess the threat is more powerful than its execution!" (pág. 148)