From Krzhizhanovsky's "Autobiography of a Corpse"

Not that everything NYRB dishes up is to my taste, but I have discovered many jewels there. Was googling and amazoning about yesterday, thinking What next. Hit on a new author that sounded interesting, even if I've no clue re pronouncing his name: Krzhizhanosky. I've already read the title story, "Autobiography of a Corpse" (I think it good enough to deserve a second reading), and moved on to the second short story in my slender e-volume: "In the Pupil."

This tidbit comes from "Corpse":

     It was then that my excruciating insomnias began. I gave up my late-night strolls about the streets. They no longer helped. I never could and cannot drink. People's society to me is worse than insomnia. But I had to fill my long, empty vigils with something. I bought thirty-two black and white carved figures and began playing chess: myself against myself. The utter futility of chess thinking appealed to me. After long struggles between thoughts and counter-thoughts, pitched battles between whole tiny world, wooden and dead, back into its box, and not a trace of the dynasties of its black and white kings, or the devastating wars they had waged, remained -- within me, or without.

     Still, my games of "myself against myself" did have one peculiarity that at first intrigued me: Black almost always won.