Finished The Girl Who Played Go, by Shan Sa
I just finished Shan Sa’s The Girl Who Played Go (Amazon UK), which I liked a lot, but since I find it hard to review fiction, I’ll just quote a couple of passages I liked, and point to a couple of reviews in other places.
He puts his first stone down in the north-west corner. His pretentious behaviour earlier is still niggling at me and I decide to play a nasty trick on him. I reply by sticking a white stone alongside it. You never start the battle with such a close combat at the beginning of a game. That is one of the golden rules.
Another:
I prefer go to chess because it is so much freer: in a game of chess the two kingdoms with their armoured warriors confront each other across the board, but the agile, twirling stones in a game of go spiral round each other, setting traps – daring and imagination are the qualities that lead to victory.
One more:
We position our soldiers at the intersections. The Stranger delimits his territories on the outer edges of the chequerboard with prodigious precision and economy. Go reflects the soul: his is meticulous and cold.
Reviews:
- “A carefully wrought novel, set within the framework of the board game, go.” Sarah A. Smith, “Rules of the Game”, Guardian, May 24, 2003.
- “‘The Girl Who Played Go’: A Powerful Little Novel,” Alan Cheuse, All Things Considered, January 21, 2005.
- “Board of War,” Peter Gordon, Asian Review of Books, May 5, 2003.
- “‘The Girl Who Played Go’,” Roy Laird, Go Reviews, July 15, 2003.
I haven’t made up my mind yet about what to read next.
Currently, I am also listening to Sylvia Nasar’s A Beautiful Mind, the biography of John Nash, which is something completely different from the movie. Very interesting stuff about game theory, mathematics, as well as about schizophrenia.