based on a popular espn magazine article selected by dave eggers for the best american nonrequired reading and a finalist for a national magazine award the inspiring true story of phiona mutesi a teenage chess prodigy from the slums of kampala ugandaphiona mutesi sleeps in a decrepit shack with her mother and three siblings and struggles to find a single meal each day phiona has been out of school most of her life because her mother cannot afford it so she is only now learning to read and write phiona mutesi is also one of the best chess players in the worldone day in 2005 while searching for food nineyearold phiona followed her brother to a dusty veranda where she met robert katende who had also grown up in the kampala slums katende a war refugee turned missionary had an improbable dream to empower kids through chessa game so foreign there is no word for it in their native language laying a chessboard in the dirt of the katwe slum robert painstakingly taught the game each day when he left at night slum kids played on with bottlecaps on scraps of cardboard at first they came for a free bowl of porridge but many grew to love chess a game thatlike their daily livesmeans persevering against great obstacles of these kids one stood out as an immense talent phionaby the age of eleven phiona was her countrys junior champion and at fifteen the national champion in september 2010 she traveled to siberia a rare journey out of katwe to compete in the chess olympiad the worlds most prestigious teamchess event phionas dream is to one day become a grandmaster the most elite title in chess but to reach that goal she must grapple with everyday life in one of the worlds most unstable countries a place where girls are taught to be mothers not dreamers and the threats of aids kidnapping and starvation loom over the peoplelike katherine boos behind the beautiful forevers and gayle tzemach lemmons the dressmaker of khair khana the queen of katwe is an intimate and heartrending portrait of human life on the poor fringes of the twentyfirst century