the City is a chess-board (title original: The Squares off the City ) is a novel of John Brunner published in 1965.

Ciudad de Vados is a futuristic megalopolis located in full heart of the Central America that the Vados president-dictator made build using the best specialists in universal town planning while hoping to gain immortality thus.

To regulate the problems of circulation, it called upon Boyd Hakluyt which, little by little, realizes that it is handled, that it is in the center of a fantastic trap.

Foot-note: the part of failures of the novel is one of the parts of a match of championship of the world opposing Steinitz to Tchigorine.