Bjelica Dimitrije. Grandmasters in Profile

Sarajevo: Zavod za izdavanje udžbenika, 1973. — 262 p.Mikhail Tal:
Many chess players play at being journalists. Some manage it better than others, but in one respect we are all the same: it is often the case that the best thing that a chess-journalist ends up doing, when he is ta /Ring about what happened , is to write about what could have happened. I cannot say wh at the worst thing i s. Many Yugoslav journalists make this mistake. But as a journalist who always ,,plays" against Dimitrije Bjelica with the Black pieces, I can most definitely say that a few days after I met him I realised that I would not have to
ask him for our interview to check the facts.
When I read Bjelica' s book, especially that part which it was my duty to read because it was about me, my opinion was confirmed. Dimitrije writes only about that which really happened. Perhaps some will say that this spoils reporting.
I think quite the contrary. It is not that chess-players are not normal people, but that to some extent their opinions have their own colour. To show this grandmasters' autonomy without departing an inch from' the truth requires a masterful technfque. The author has showed this technique in this, his ,,journalist's thesis."
As one of the ,,heroes" of Dimitrije Bjelica' s tales I can also pay the author a compliment because he has written so much. Those ,,who have lost" in the book come to twenty, but the number of the readers who have won is hundreds of times greater.
As a reader of ,,Grandmasters in Profile" and forgetting for a moment that I am a grandmaster, I send the author the following message:
,,Thanks a lot and write some more."
To my colleagues I give this advice: ,,Read it and give it to a friend."