a 'simple' program, hard as .... to understand

[meems]

Hi, I'm learning python and I went thru some code that was under the title 'simple python programs' and found this.

BOARD_SIZE = 8

def under_attack(col, queens):
   left = right = col

   for r, c in reversed(queens):
       left, right = left - 1, right + 1

       if c in (left, col, right):
           return True
   return False

def solve(n):
   if n == 0:
       return [[]]

   smaller_solutions = solve(n - 1)

   return [solution+[(n,i+1)]
       for i in xrange(BOARD_SIZE)
           for solution in smaller_solutions
               if not under_attack(i+1, solution)]
for answer in solve(BOARD_SIZE):
   print answer

It was my intention to read thru this and a few other programs to see if I could understand them, gain some insight into how python works. If I failed, I could use pyCharm debugger to walk thru each line step by step.

I have to say, even using the debugger, I find this code cryptic.
Is it just me? I'd like to know if experienced python coders can read this code and within a short time understand it.
It has what I'd term 'generator' terms, and these terms are embedded \ implicit. i.e.

Will I be expected to work with code like this in a junior level python job? Cos if I am, I think I'd better quit now and go back to C !

Didn't someone say 'explicit is best' ( with reference to declaring 'self' to be a parameter passed to itself in instance methods ) ? Python is the most implicit language I tried to learn, except prolog. But where prolog is all implicit, python seems to be a horribly confusing mix of implicit and explicit. Powerful I'm sure, but extremely hard to read.

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its the 8 queens on a chess board problem, but knowing this I still couldn't understand it.