Download or read book The Queen of Katwe written by Tim Crothers and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2012 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The true story of a female prodigy from the Ugandan slum of Katwe. Phiona Mutesi sleeps in a mud hut with her mother and siblings, and struggles to find a meal each day. She is also one if the best chess players in the world. One day in 2005, while searching for food, nine-year-old Phiona followed her brother to a dusty veranda where she met Robert Katende, a refugee who had also grown up in the slams. Robert hand improbable aspiration: to empower Katwe's kids thought chess – game so foreign that there was no word for it in their native language. Robert taught the game each day. At first the children came for the free porridge, but many grew to love chess, a game that – as in their daily lives – meant navigating obstacles. One talented young girl stood out: Phiona. By the age of 11, Phiona was Uganda's junior champion; at 15, she was the national champion. In 2010, she travelled to Siberia to compete in the Chess Olympiad, the world's most prestigious team-chess event. Phiona's dream is to become a chess grandmaster. But to reach that goal, she must grapple with life in one of the world's most unstable countries – a place where girls are taught to be mothers, not dreamers, and the threats of AIDS, kidnapping, and starvation loom constantly. Like Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers and Gayle Tzemach Lemmon's The Dressmaker of Khair Khama. This is an intimate and heart-rending portrait of human life on the urban fringers in the 21st century. 'Not just inspirational but a corrective to our most damning assumptions.' Library Journal