Jernau Morat Gurgeh is one of the Culture's greatest Game Players - master of every board, computer, and strategy game known to civilisation. Restless and bored with easy victories, Gurgeh is talked into travelling to the Empire of Azad, a brutal interstellar state where political power is determined by a single game so complex it mirrors life itself. The winner becomes emperor. Mocked as a pampered outsider and underestimated at every turn, Gurgeh begins to play - and discovers that the game reveals not just strategy but the soul of the civilisation that created it. A novel about what games tell us about the societies that play them, and about what happens when two incompatible civilisations meet across a board.
