Looking-Glass House

<<In another moment Alice was through the glass, and had jumped lightly down into the Looking-glass room. The very first thing she did was to look whether there was a fire in the fireplace, and she was quite pleased to find that there was a real one, blazing away as brightly as the one she had left behind. "So I shall be as warm here as I was in the old room," thought Alice: "warmer, in fact, because there'll be no one here to scold me away from the fire. Oh, what fun it'll be, when they see me through the glass in here, and can't get at me!">>

En el fantástico libro de "Alicia a través del espejo" ("Through the Looking Glass"), la protagonista tiene la oportunidad de entrar, atravesando el espejo del salón, en una casa donde todo es diferente. El fuego de la chimenea es más vivo, el reloj sonríe, las piezas de ajedrez cobran vida y las flores del jardín pueden hablar, siempre que haya alguien que se lo merezca. Y, pasando el jardín hay un país que es en realidad un giganteso tablero de ajedrez. Allí Alicia debe jugar una partida como peón de las piezas blancas. Su misión consiste en llegar al otro extremo del tablero. Por el camino se encuentra con misteriosos personajes y extrañas e ilógicas aventuras.

El libro empieza con un problema de ajedrez, que tiene solución, por cierto, aunque yo no he probado a resolverlo con tablero y fichas.

Algunas frases sin sentido que me han gustado:

"Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!"

 

"I see nobody on the road," said Alice.
"I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked in a fretful tone. "To be able to see Nobody!"

 

"The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday — but never jam to-day."

"I don't understand you," said Alice. "It's dreadfully confusing!"
"That's the effect of living backwards," the Queen said kindly: "it always makes one a little giddy at first."