Jernau Morat Gurgeh, an expert gamesplayer from either a Culture, is bored using life. A Culture's Special Circumstances (SC) section suggests that he attend participate around the games tournament inside an alien civilisation, the Empire of Azad, in which a complex game (too known as Azad) is used to determine social rank and political status. At a equivalent period, he is blackmailed by an ex-SC drone into accepting a assignment therefore that he potty utilise his newfound influence to keep around a drone accepted back into Favorite Circumstances.

the game itself is sufficiently subtle that a streaming video player's manoeuvre came to reflect their have political & philosophic outlook. As the Culture citizen, Gurgeh naturally plays using a style markedly different from either his opponents, & finds that his patterns is super successful. When he plays progressively additional right Azad politicians, Gurgeh finally plays for the position of Emperor of Azad. Late, he discovers that his participation is the share of the Culture plot to overthrow a corrupt & savage Empire, & that he, the streaming video player, was as a matter of fact a pawn within a big game.

Although Gurgeh never discovers a whole truth, these are at long last revealed to a reader that possibly a blackmail that forced him to assume a mission was carried out sustaining the cognition & permission of a few faction inside Favorite Circumstances itself. a book so contains the uncommon lesson of a imaginable abuse of power in the Culture.