I'll tell you what I *wish* I were writing...
A mate told me the other day about this Russian chess grandmaster in (I think) the '70s who was radically pro-Palestine and went to the occupied territories to take part in political activism there - I don't know whether he was just agitating or getting involved in actual paramilitary/terrorist activities or what, but he wound up in an Israeli jail with (of course) all these Palestinian activists, PLO and Islamic Jihad members, whatever. Anyway he started to teach some of them to play chess, then the ones he'd taught passed it on to others, and pretty soon the entire jail was chess mad...I'm not sure what (if anything) of note happened next, but I just loved the idea of all these guys honing their strategic muscles and mental discipline with chess. Sounds like it'd make a basis, in skilful hands, for a really incredible novel, or even just a good dramatisation of the actual events. Probably could be a good film too, but I reckon a book would work better. You could really riff on ideas like what it means to be subversive, and how you can resist and subvert a hostile regime with your mind, even though they can 'own' your body by incarcerating you.
Does anyone else here know about this, what the guy was called and when it happened?