Culture - the company of people and machines - has already given the world many great players. One of them is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, Player, master of every game board, computer conqueror, strategist. Bored of success, he travels to the cruel and incredibly rich Azadian Empire to play their famous game. A game as complex as life itself, whose winners become emperors. Gurgeh accepts the ridiculed, blackmailed, almost murdered  the rules of the game and the challenge of his life, which will almost no doubt end in his death