Surviving Changi: E.E. Colman - a Chess Biography Add to Watch List Watching View Watchlist >

Singapore Heritage Society, Singapore, 2007, hardback with dustjacket, xvi+349 pp, 745 grams, some photos, a groundbreaking biography of Eugene Colman written by chess historian Olimpiu Urcan, 235 annotated games, 10 studies, sources and bibliography. Condition: good, but traces of moisture without color imprint.

This is a pioneering chess biography of Ernest Eugene Colman (1878-1964), chess expert, civil servant and doyen of Singapore's chess community. His name is attached to the Colman Variation of the Two Knights Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Nf6 4.Ng5 d5 5.exd5 Na5 6.Bb5+ c6 7.dxc6 bxc6 8.Qf3 Rb8) but the most remarkable thing about it were the circumstances under which it was first analysed. During World War II Colman was interned in Changi Civilian Internees Camp in Singapore (1942–1945) and his opening analysis helped take his (and his fellow prisoners') mind off the horrors of the prison (about 850 POWs died in Changi Prison during the Japanese occupation).