Now, with the publication of Chess Comet Charousek, that situation has changed - mostly for the worse. Author Charuchin's biographical narrative is limited mostly to the bare facts of Charousek's life and chess career. Much of it could have been written by anyone with access to his tournament crosstables and an average chess encyclopedia. We learn trivialities such as what round he played whom at Berlin 1897, but next to nothing about Charousek as a man except that he studied law. Charuchin mixes in with his few facts some glaring errors.
Translation is another problem.
I have no idea how Charuchin's prose sounds in its original Russian, but its English translation puts me in mind of that ad. One gets the distinct impression the translators were first-year language students ineptly filling in their many vocabulary gaps from a dictionary. The translation is not only poor but incomplete. The book's only value lies in its games. Qxa7 Rb8 21.