num_pages: 309
description: Gurgeh is one of the greatest game-players the Culture's ever produced; respected and rarely beaten, he is successful at almost everything he attempts. Nevertheless in time, feeling unfulfilled, he becomes restless and asks Contact—the Culture organisation whose job it is to find, investigate, analyse and occasionally interfere in other civilisations—to find something that might challenge him.What they find him is the Empire of Azad, a civilisation of immense wealth and appalling cruelty, a hundred thousand light-years away from home and everything he knows, where there exists a game so complex and so closely modelled on the rules of existence that the winner becomes Emperor.Under the threat of blackmail, and with no real choice, Gurgeh accepts the challenge and sets off on a year-long journey to a strange land where the ultimate game becomes one he knows he cannot win.
language: English
title: The Player of Games
titlecomplete: The Player of Games
characters: Jernau Morat Gurgeh
genres: Space, Fantasy, Cultural, Speculative Fiction, Novels, Science Fiction Fantasy, Audiobook, Space Opera, Fiction, Science Fiction
ratings_count: 70343
places: Empire of Azad
series: Culture
awards: awardedAt: 757411200000
name: Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire
category: Traduction, awardedAt: 788947200000
name: Tähtivaeltaja Award
publisher: Macmillan