Chess champ Niranjan turns author with The Lively Library & an Unlikely Romance!

He has been a former National under-17 Champion, Silver medalist in the under-18 Commonwealth, Gold in under-18 Asian team and champion of the strongest state championship – the Tamil Nadu Open. You might expect a guy with a career high Elo of 2309 to be writing something about chess! But meet Niranjan Navalgund from Belagavi – The man with diverse talents! Niranjan is not only a strong chess player but also a prolific writer and today is the launch of the first book authored by him – The lively library and an unlikely romance! In this article Niri shares with us his journey of how he maintained his passion in chess and writing and excelled at both of them.

In 2013, he started writing a book on chess, but with little luck. In 2014, he came across a short story contest that was to be held by Readomania. He did not win the contest, but the story earned a place in a forthcoming anthology. Thus began his journey into the literary circle with Hide & Seek and then later Chronicles of Urban Nomads, which was released in September 2014.
He then collaborated with my friend, Garima, on two occasions. We wrote Love & Lollypop for the Wordweavers Contest 2015, and a short film, B-Tweets, produced by United India Films.

Niranjan’s book The Lively Library and an Unlikely Romance has been released today!

This is the plot of the book:

Unknown to Nayan, the library he inherits from his deceased father, is a mysterious place. Hiriya Halepu, Pu.Nayaka, Kapshi and and many others live there. They have a secret world with celebrations, romances, pangs of separation and conflicts. This is the Book-World. As two souls in this world fall in love, they encounter a strange predicament that separates them from each other. Things go from bad to worse when an unknown enemy sends a threat of destruction to this whole mysterious world. They call their resolute protector, Helmine, who unravels many unknown facets of this world, in an attempt to save it from the danger. The lovers struggle to find each other, and Helmine tries hard to decipher the threat messages. But will she be able to save this world from destruction? Will the two souls in love be united? There are no easy answers. Because this is no ordinary Library, this is the place where books come to life.

The book is available on Flipkart and Amazon.