Five of the first six chapters of INTERREGNUM: Inside the Grueling and Glamorous Battle to Become the Next King of Chess (Pegasus Books – April 21st, 2026) track players’ paths to, and results in, the 2024 Candidates Tournament in Toronto. Since author Jordan Himelfarb is a managing editor of the Toronto Star, one of North America’s largest newspapers, he is well positioned to report on that tournament.
Its winner, GM Gukesh Dommaraju, played GM Ding Liren for the World Chess Championship. Their match is the subject of the seventh chapter of Himelfarb’s book. The epilogue begins with Gukesh’s welcome home to India as World Chess Champion.
While Himmelfarb’s chronology of the 2023 qualifiers for the 2024 Candidates Tournament is accurate, his writing about chess history has errors. One mistake, from the book’s 23rd page, concerns the first Filipino GM.
First Filipino Grandmaster
As part of his profile of GM Wesley So, Himelfarb writes, “Before he turned fifteen he became his country’s first grandmaster.” Ask any Internet search engine who was the first grandmaster from the Philippines, So’s home country, and the answer comes back in milliseconds: Grandmaster Eugenio “Eugene” Torre.
Torre earned his GM title in 1974, 19 years before So was born. So earned his GM title in 2008. Not only does Himelfarb overlook Torre, who reached #17 in the chess world, he also ignores six other Filipinos who achieved their GM titles before So did:
- Rosendo Balinas Jr. (1976)
- Rogelio Antonio Jr. (1993)
- Buenaventura Villamayor (2000)
- Nelson Mariano II (2004)
- Mark Paragua (2005)
- Darwin Laylo (2007)
An Odd Cover
The cover of Himelfarb’s book shows one black king, one black queen, two black rooks, two black bishops, two black knights…and nine black pawns. The extra black pawn is never explained.
Chess Games
INTERREGNUM: Inside the Grueling and Glamorous Battle to Become the Next King of Chess doesn’t have notated chess games but captures key moments of games in words. Here is how Himelfarb describes the thirty-sixth move of GM Hikaru Nakamura versus GM Nijat Abasov: “The [evaluation] bar showed a significant edge for Abasov until, after his thirty-sixth move—a quiet shifting of the black queen—the bar swung wildly in the other direction.”
