Novels and Other Books Featuring Go

"The Master of Go" was written by Kawabata and first appeared in book form in 1954 in Japanese and called "Meijin". It was translated into English in 1972 at about the time of his death. The story is based on the 1938 Meijin title game, for which he was a reporter. It records the change from the old order to the new, with it being the old master's last match. Kawabata received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968.

"The Girl who Played Go" was first published in French in 2001 under the title "La Joueuse de Go". The author, Shan Sa, comes originally from Beijing, but she moved to Paris when a student. The story is set in war-torn Manchuria of the late 1930s and tells of the forbidden love between a Chinese Go champion and a Japanese army officer. The narrative alternates between the perspectives of the two main characters. An alternative cover

"First Kyu" by Dr Sung-Hwa Hong was first published in English in 1999, translated from Korean by American Go professional Janice Kim. The story tells of a young man struggling to become a Korean Go (Baduk) professional and how it affects his life and relationships.

"Shibumi" is a thriller where the main character, the assassin Nicholai Hel, learnt Go by himself when a child in Shanghai and then studied in Japan under a pro during WW2. All the sections of the book are given Go terms such as Fuseki, Sabaki and Seki. A recent edition (illustrated) has Go on the cover. The author is named "Trevanian", which is a pen-name of American author and professor Rodney Whitaker (1931-2005).

American author Don Winslow has written the novel "Satori" (2011) as a prequel to "Shibumi". It features the formative years of Nicholai Hel, the Japanese-trained assassin. Winslow learnt Go through being a fan of "Shibumi" and included many Go metaphors and references in the new book.

The fifth book by Chris Bradford "The Ring of Water" in the "Young Samurai" series (March 2011) features the young hero, Jack Fletcher, playing Go in Nara to save his life and those of his friends. Here is a review from BGJ 155 and more about the book.

David Mitchell (1969-) is an English novelist who lived more than 8 years in Japan. His 2010 book "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet" is about a Dutchman, who went to live in Dejima, Nagasaki, in 1799, and features some Go references, including games between Japanese officials. Here is a review from BGJ 155. An alternative cover and another alternative cover.

In David Mitchell’s 2020 book "Utopia Avenue" set in the 1960s, a character remembers back to a scene in "The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet".

David Mitchell also mentions Go in one of the linked short stories in "Cloud Atlas"; in the futuristic Korean setting of "An Orison of Sonmi ~ 451" the title character is mentioned as playing Go on her computer and against a friend.

Jeffery Deaver's crime novel "The Stone Monkey" is about illegal Chinese immigrants and features Go several times in the story as the detective is taught to play by a Chinese colleague. The section header pages all quote from "The Game of Wei-Chi" by Pecorini and Shu.

Jeffery Deaver's 2010 thriller "Edge" is about an agent who is in witness protection and is a games fan. He plans his protection by various games strategies. He collects games (67 in one house and 121 in another) and likes to visit his local games club in DC where one can play "chess, bridge, Go, Wei-Chi, Risk or dozens of other games."

Jeffery Deaver's 2014 book of short crime stories "Trouble in Mind" has a story "The Competitors" set at the Beijing Olympics. In it, the Chinese head of security out thinks terrorists as he is a Go player. He explains to the US and Russian officers "It's our version of Chess. Only better, of course." He adds "I look forward when I play the game. You must always look forward to beat your opponent at Go. You must see beyond the board."

Scarlett Thomas (from Canterbury) has written a mystery novel "PopCo" (2004), where the employees of the PopCo toy company all play Go and the main character's cat is called Atari (see page 11).

David Boop is a Go player and his 2008 novel "She Murdered Me with Science" features Go. The main character visits a Go parlour in America (see page 41) and plays with a Japanese friend. An old lady uses the game position to predict his fortune.

Robert van Gulik (1910-1967) was a Dutchman who lived in Japan and China and produced a series of Judge Dee mysteries set in ancient China. "The Chinese Lake Murders" contains Go within its plot. Here is a review from BGJ 156. An alternative cover.

Sara Paretsky's collection of detective stories "Windy City Blues" has a story called "The Takamoku Joseki". In it, Mr Takamoku runs a Go club in his flat in the same block as that of the detective, V.I. Warshawski. He has a problem when someone scratches a Go ban and then one of the players dies during a club meeting.

A successful French novel, now available in English, is "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" by Muriel Barbery (2006). The plot involves philosophy and the relationships between a girl of 12 and her concierge, who is a secret intellectual, and also a Japanese businessman who moves into their building. The chapter "Profound Thought No. 7" features a whole page argument about the basics of Go, between the girl and a film producer who is making a movie of Shan Sa's "The Girl Who Played Go". An alternative cover.

"Walking on Glass" by Iain Banks (1985) features three stories of converging lives. In one, a couple are trapped in a futuristic tower playing various seemingly impossible and uncompletable games in order earn freedom. One of these games is Open-Plan Go, played on an infinite board and only completable by using stones that are infinite in one direction from a point. "Canal Dreams" (1989) has two Go references (to playing and the grid board) and "Feersum Endjinn" by Ian M. Banks (1994) also has a minor Go-playing reference.

"Queenmagic, Kingmagic" by Ian Watson (1986). This fantasy novel features two countries at war with magic, initially by the rules of Chess. When a game is won the world changes and the game rules change. In subsequent worlds the games are Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly and in then Go. In the Go world camps appear on an empty plain, alternately white played by General Shiro and black by General Kuro. Go rules apply with groups of camps needing the double-eye formation to avoid obliteration. The side with the most surrounded cross-points after rearrangement wins. English writer Ian Watson spent three years in Japan in the 1960s, so no doubt he became familiar with Go there. An alternative cover

"Starborne" is a Sci-Fi novel by Robert Silverberg (1996), reworked from a science fiction short story named "Ship-Sister, Star-Sister". Quite a big part of both the short story and the novel mention Go. As the crew of the starship Wotan set out to explore the universe, a craze starts to play Go to pass the time. The book's second sentence is "Three games of Go are in progress in the Wotan's lounge." Initially 18-20 of the 50 crew play, but almost all do later on, including the blind telepath Noelle who is taught by the captain and plays by giving coordinates. There are three main sections, pages 18-20, 40-44 and 76-78, which explain how the game is played and who is beating who. Some games between characters are described at some length (see page 262). Noelle becomes the champion and plays two players at once (page 203). Go is mentioned at regular intervals thought the book.

"Split Infinity" by Piers Anthony (1980) is the first of the Apprentice Adept series of novels by this England-born American fantasy writer. It features two parallel worlds - Phaze, a world full of unicorns, werewolves and magic, and Proton a land of technology, robots and a multi-sport competition called the Game. The serf Stile is a jockey and Game player in Proton who travels between the two worlds. In chapter 15 "Games" he tries to get higher up the Game ladder so he can enter the annual Tourney. To get to Rung 7 he has to beat a player skilled at the mental competitions. After drawing at tic-tac-toe and Go-bang, they have to play Go. The description of the game and how to play takes more than two pages. They play with a real board and stones, and fight over eyes, seki and playing efficiently. An alternative cover

"Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson (1999) is a fantasy history featuring converging stories set in the Second World War and fifty years later. It features cryptography, at Bletchley Park and elsewhere, Second World War battles and the hunt for enemy gold. Go is featured in the chapter "Sultan" (on page 318 of 918 in one edition, some editions have over 1100 pages). The Sultan of Kinakuta, in the modern era, shows an "ornate and expensive-looking Go board covered with a complex pattern of black and white stones" to his guests. He compares the simple but complex reasons for placing stones to the policies of his government. He then clears the board with his arm, the stones clattering to the floor, and says it is time to start over. An alternative cover.

Stephenson also minorly mentions Go in his books "The Diamond Age" (1995) and "In the Beginning was the Command Line" (1999).

"The Narrow Road to the Deep North" is a 2013 novel by Australian author Richard Flanagan. It was the winner of the 2014 Man Booker Prize. It follows the life of Australian doctor Dorrigo Evans largely through flash backs and a large part of the book is set among the POWs building the Burma Railway where Dorrigo is the officer at a work camp. Go is mentioned several times, firstly after the war when it mentions both Go and Shogi being played in Changi Prison by war criminals (page 344 of 448), and secondly, in the following chapter (page 353 on), the fomer Japanese officer of the camp comes, post-war, to play Go with a doctor at the hopital where he works. The book talks of the Go table, how a black stone resembles a blind black eye and how they talk whilst they play.

English author David Wingrove features Go about ten times in "The Middle Kingdom", the first volume of his epic future history work "Chung Kuo" (and in other volumes in the series too). In chapter 2 (p85 of 718) the rising hero Chen starts to play against a colleague's game machine while waiting for him. In chapter 3 ("A Game Of Static Patterns") the villain DeVore plays against the same machine while waiting for a victim (p103-105). The game record he leaves reveals to his opposition that he is one of the strongest players (p135). In Chapter 15 (p554), DeVore admits to have given a gift of a copy of Pecorini and Shu's book. The young prince and his friend play and are "practising openings and corner plays" (p571). The rising hero takes 7 stones on a real board against the villain (p576-582), but slowly watches "his position crumble on all sides", until he resigns and DeVore carries on playing black. They also discuss the origin and significance of the game while they play. They play again later on (p632-636). The board lies broken and the stones scattered when DeVore's base is raided later (p670). The second chapter of the Epilogue is called "A Gift Of Stones" and these turn out to be all white stones carved from human bone - a message from DeVore to the young prince - in wooden bowls accompanied by a board.

The author's note says Go is "not merely the world's oldest game but its most elegant". He quotes Pecorini and Shu's book "The Game of Wei Chi" (1929) as his source on Go (together with a friend Robert Carter). Also the "Ranka" (Rotten Axe Handle) poem is quoted in the introduction. An alternative cover.

"NYPD Red 2" by James Patterson and Marshall Karp is a 2014 thriller in which one of the NYPD’s detectives, Zach Jordan, is searching near a park in a Chinatown for witnesses to an abduction that led to murder. The detective approaches a Go game being played in the park, and challenges the local champion to a game, betting $100. After a hard-fought hour the detective intentionally makes a mistake, throwing the game, which only the champion, an old man, recognizes. This soon pays off with the old man coming to the aid of the detectives as a witness. At the end the detective plans to give the old man a kaya board from a 700 year old tree instead of the hand-made plywood board he has been using and yuki stones to replace the plastic ones.

"Machines Like Me" by Ian McEwan is a 2019 tale of a man's relationship to his AI-powered android. It is set in 1982 in an alternative history where Alan Turing didn't die and he and Demis Hassabis created the first Go AI program in 1968! Go and the match against the pro are described on pages 37-39. Later (page 177) Turing describes how they wrote the learning program that mastered Go and how they then revisited Chess using the same approach.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula Le Guin (1969) is a science fiction novel, the first in the Hainish Cycle, set on a planet called Gethin, or Winter by those who visit. An ambassador from earth, called Genly Ai, is the first alien on the planet whose human inhabitants are of a single sex. When he escapes across the ice area with a local, in chapter 16, they come to a stony area. "Ai taught me a Terran game played on squares with little stones, called go, an excellent difficult game. As he remarked, there are plenty of stones here to play go with." The authoress was well known for being a some time Go player and also mentioned that a race had no games like Chess or Go in "Always Coming Home" (1985).

"Limbo System" is a Sci-Fi novel by Rick Cook (1989) in which all the chapters are named after Go terms. An starship comes into to contact with demonic aliens who want to steal their technology. Sukihara Takiuji is the best Go player in the crew and plays every day against other crew members and even against the aliens. Go principles are used to analyse the aliens' actions. "The Wizardry Consulted" also has a minor Go reference (1989).

"Jian" by Eric Van Lustbader (1985) is the first of his two thrillers that feature Go. The main characters play and analyse politics and their actions against Go strategies, in a background of battles for control of Hong Kong.

"Shan" by Eric Van Lustbader (1986) is the second Jake Maroc thriller and the follow up to Jian. Its story features many threads involving espionage, opium smuggling and business cartels in Hong Kong. Four of the characters are mentioned in the context of Go (wei qi) strategy influencing their strategy in life: Jake Maroc (p313 of 656) who knew not to concentrate on just one part of the board , Daniella Vorkuta (p74 and p425) who planned to make breathless the pieces of Shi Zhilin (p74), and General Kuo (p541) who learned Go from an expert old man in a park. The author's note states that "kalpa" (meaning eternity, presumably "ko") is overcome using "Shan", the mountain.

"Silk Road" by American poet Jeanne Larsen (1989) is a fantasy set in 8th century China (part of a trilogy). It features a girl's quest to find her mother guarded by celestial beings. Two of these, the Jade Emperor and an under-secretary play Go with black and coloured pearls, and they also hold conversations around the board.

"Isle of Woman" by Piers Anthony (1993) is a collection of short stories about men and women through history. Chapter 16 "T'ang" features Go, but any game of skill could have replaced it.

"No Shadow in the City" by John Callaghan (2012) is a mystery story about crime in Glasgow. However the main character, Stevie McCabe, is away in London at the start of the book and one of the things he is doing there is playing Go.

"The Caryatids" by Bruce Sterling (2009) is a science fiction book that states: "Mr. Zeng was not a small-scale, face-to-face killer in the bold way of the warriors that she knew and loved best. Mr. Zeng was the kind of killer who deployed a nuclear warhead the way he might set a black go-stone on a game board." Also "Distraction" (1999) has a minor Go reference.

"The Wise Man's Fear" by US author Patrick Rothfuss is the second part (2011) of the Kingkiller Chronicle. It features a game played by the main character, Kvothe, and called "Tak" that is reminiscent of Go, which suggests familarity of the author with Go. The game is played with stones of two colours and is renowned for being simple in rules, but complex in strategy. Also they play it to have a beautiful game, not necessarily to win.

"The Brotherhood of the Rose" by David Morrell is a 1983 thriller that was also made into a television mini-series. About half way through a dojo is visited where two men (Lee and Ishiguro) are playing Go. Eliot asks them about the game, which is explained too him, and Eliot sees how they hold the stones correctly ("like a crab's claw").

One of the protagonists is a keen Go player in the "Uncommon Series" by Eliot Peper ("Uncommon Stock Version 1.0", "Uncommon Stock Exit Strategy" and "Uncommon Stock Power Play", published 2014 - 2015). The thriller trilogy follows a pair of entrepreneurs that drop out of college to found a new tech startup and get caught up in an international conspiracy along the way. James Chen is the company's Chief Technology Officer who develops a complex algorithm that identifies fraud in large financial datasets, based on pattern recognition that he has learnt from Go.

"Emperor of the Eight Islands" is first of the "Tale of Shikanoko" series by UK-born Australian writer Lian Hearn (2016). She sets them in a mythical version of feudal Japan. On the first page (page 3 - paperback edition) Kazumaru says "'We heard a funny noise'," and he mimed placing stones on a board. 'Clack, clack, clack.'" On page 4 it says he grew up with his mother and father often playing, and the sounds: "the quiet clack of stones on the bowls, the rattle in the wooden bowls." On page 5, Kazumaru's father says "'I am going to play Go. How often do you get the chance to play Go against tengu?'" It then says he died because he played Go against the tengu (mountain Goblins) and lost. The boy later remembers the incident on pages 220 and 327. On page 418, "Nagatomo had found an abandoned Go board and was trying to show the boys how to play, with rain-washed pebbles they had filched from the garden."

"The Tengu's Game of Go" is book four in the "Tale of Shikanoko" series by Lian Hearn (2016). It has tumbling Go stones on the cover and features battles and strange beasts in a mythical feudal Japan. Go features a few times in the book. The theft of a magical bow during the game that is the climax of the book changes the game outcome.

"Across the Nightingale Floor" is the first of the "Tales of the Otari" (2002); in it two of the main characters are engrossed in a game of Go in Chapter 9.

Mai Jia is described as China's answer to John Le Carré. "In the Dark" was published in 2003 and translated in 2015. It is series of memoirs featuring workers at Unit 701, China's secret cryptanalysis establishment. Star female worker Huang Yiyi plays Chinese Chess and also Go in chapter 20 of "An Angel with Problems"; she tries to play the narrator's moves for him. Go features heavily in "The Shadow of Chen Erhu". Starting in chapter "Day Two", recently retired "father" sees his son watching Go on television and becomes enthralled by it, using Go to fill the void left by no longer cracking codes. Over the next six pages we learn how father instantly becomes good at the game and needs harder and harder opponents to beat. In "Day Four" they struggle to find opponents and the game is compared to Chinese Chess. "Day Five" describes how expectedly father suddenly loses his talent as illness begins.

"Saturn Run" by John Sandford and Ctein (2015) is set in the 2060s. Two members of a spaceship crew use a 3D printer to make a Go board and stones. They reference the game briefly on pages 202, 216 and 218, and the beginner manages to get his handicap down to seven stones. He also reads "a famous Go instruction book by Nicholai Hel." Hel was of course the main character of Shibumi by Trevanian.

Within "The Road to Dune" by Frank Herbert et al (2005) is the story "A Whisper of Caladan Seas." 10000 years in the future the heroes are trapped in a cave: "Squatting on the stone floor off to his left, two sullen soldiers had used their fingertips to trace a grid in the dust. With light and dark stones they played a make-shift game of Go – a carryover from ancient Terra."

"The Boy Who Would Live Forever" by Frederik Pohl (2004) is the last Heechee novel in the Gateway series. 41 pages in, something one of the prospectors found in an old HeeChee tunnel prompts the comment that apparently even aliens like Go. Pohl's short story "The Gold at Starbow's End" also has a minor Go reference.

"Dragon Games" by Jan-Philipp Sendker (2007), translated from German in 2016, follows a westerner's attempt to take on the corrupt Chinese state and industry on behalf of a sleighted Chinese couple. The husband of the doomed couple, in chapter 19, compares his situation to Go: "It was like playing a game of Go with no hope of winning: the opponent was backing him into a corner, one move after another. He was hemmed in; his white pieces were surrounded; the ring around him grew tighter; it was impossible to break free. No matter how often he looked at the board, or from which angle he did so."

"Stop, Go, Murder" by Paul Freeman (2017), a former mayor of Laguna Beach CA and Go fan, is a story about murder, the game of Go and the role of happenstance in shaping our lives. It introduces Steven Crane, a homicide detective who has come to see his life, including his current case, as a deceiving game of Go.

"When The Emperor Was Divine" by Julie Otsuka (2002) is a small book about the forced Japanese internment during the second World War. At the beginning of the second chapter, as the family of three arrive at the desert camp, the boy thinks he sees his father everywhere in a variety of camp activities, as well as "Playing Go with the other men in their floppy straw hats."

The series of books "The Wheel of Time" by Robert Jordan, of which "The Eye of the World" is the first, are set on an alien world where they sometimes play "the game of stones" which seems to resemble Go.

"The Stone of Kannon" by O. A. Bushnell (1979) tells the story of the first Japanese contract laborers who were imported in 1868 to work on sugar plantations in Hawaii. Go is present in many scenes both in Japan and on the ship sailing to Hawaii. A retired prostitute looking for a husband is surrounded by suitors who "played Go with her, at which she was very proficient, and hanafuda (flower cards), at which she excelled."

"The Vegetarian" by Han Kang (2002), translated from Korean in 2015 by Deborah Smith, is three stories set in Korea and has the following Go allusion on page 164 of the paperback: "There’s been a time when she could spend hours like this, weighing up all the variables that might have contributed to determining Yeong-hye’s fate. Of course it was entirely in vain, this act of mentally picking up and counting the Paduk stones that have been laid out on the board of her sister’s life."

"Known To Evil" by Walter Mosley (2010), is a crime novel featuring detective Leonid McGill. On page 212 the detective sums up the results of an online search. "Bug must have been serious about Zephyra because I received a long document from him, giving me all kinds of hitherto unrevealed information about Angie. She’d participated in a few long-distance runs of ten kilometers or more and worked for the Hillary campaign during the primaries. She played Go over the Internet and was pretty good at it, earning an emerald rating at a California club."

Mosley's "Trouble's What I Do" (2020) also has a Go reference (page 59): "Talking to Twill was like playing a game of Go; words were pieces that accrued on all sides until, in the end, victory was the child of sacrifice". Go is also mentioned a couple of times in "Down the River Unto the Sea" (2018) and also "Every Man A King" (2023).

"The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making" by Catherynne M. Valente (2011) is part of a fantasy series featuring a 12-year old girl called September. On page 149 she us talking to Death: "Death, I don’t know what to do." "It’s very brave of you to admit that. Most knightly folk I happen by bluster and force me to play Chess with them. I don’t even like Chess! For strategy Wrackglummer and even Go are much superior."

"The Paper Managerie and Other Stories" by Ken Liu (2016) features Go in the science fiction short story "Mono No Aware". Hiroto is allowed to take his Go set with him when earth is abandoned. He teaches about Japanese culture, but a young American he is teaching Go to comments that all stones are the same, "boring... There are no heroes in Go!" Later Hiroto thinks of a game of Go played with his father as he struggles to fix a hole in the spacecraft's array, comparing it to fixing a hole in a group of stones. Hear the story on LeVar Burton Reads (12/02/2019).

"The Final Frontier" by Neil Clarke (2018) also features the story "Mono No Aware", but also "Shiva In Shadow" by Nancy Kress. This takes place on a starship visiting a black hole. Go is proposed as mental and social training to bring two scientists closer together, as they investigate a quantum physics discovery.

"The Garden Of Evening Mists" by Tan Twan Eng (2012) has a brief mention. Set in Malayasia, with flash backs to wartime and just after, the way guerillas are controlling areas is described as black areas and white areas, which reminds the narrator of Go which she sometimes plays with the Japanese man called Aritomo.

"This Is How You Lose the Time War" is a 2019 time-travelling romance novella by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. As the romance between Red and Blue plays out like a game, Go is referenced majorly four times. For instance: ‘She decides she would describe it using terms from Go: You place each stone expecting it may do many things. A strike is also a block is also a different strike.' Go is a game wherein 'outcomes [are] determined from the first move, endlessly iterated until the split where we fork off into unstable, chaotic possibility.'

"One False Move" is a 2019 thriller by Britsh author Robert Goddard. It is about a Cornish Go player who can beat the newest AI in the game of Go and is tracked down by an IT company to work for them. The first part mentions Go quite a lot, far more than usual. The author must have spoken with Go players because there were not many mistakes in his description of the game and of Go clubs and tournaments. The plot is not very convincing, but not too bad either. Three chapters have a Go diagram using the game Lee Sedol won from Alphago (the captured stones are not removed though).
Go also has a brief mention in "The Ends of the Earth" mostly set in Japan.

In Adrian McKinty’s 2016 novel "Rain Dogs", the protagonist, Sean Duffy, Northern Ireland police detective, while investigating a murder, goes to Finland to interview the prime suspect, Mr Ek. In chapter 20, he later returns to Ek's ice-bound island home to find him playing Go against an American friend, Jasper Miller. The book calls the stones both pieces and tiles. Ek complains he has been put off his game as his opponent is about to play "Kami no itte" (the divine move). Duffy examines the board and is none the wiser. In a later chapter entitled “Kami no Itte” (chapter 29), despite Duffy thinking he has played the divine move against the suspect, the suspect cleverly eludes trial by playing his own divine move. Alt Cover

Avery Jenkins’ 2020 novel "Dark River" features Go being used to solve an old murder. Asa Cire attempts to find out the truth, but gets dogged by a Chinese mob whose stolen manuscript is a clue and the murderer themself, putting his life in danger.

"The Department of Certainty" by S. C. Paterson is a 2024 novel written by British Go player Sue Paterson; it mentions Go on page 3. In it the Department of Certainty sets up a ‘what if’ world where our brains are populated by competing departments. Jessica is in the ‘real world.’ She is a child protection social worker who decides that she will kill herself before the end of the day. Colin works in Jessica’s soul. He and his friends are in a race against time to prevent Jessica from throwing herself into the Thames. Their task is to work out who or what is responsible for Jessica’s suicidal thoughts and finally to steer her away from death on Vauxhall Bridge.

The 2022 novel "Tomorrow And Tomorrow And Tomorrow" by Gabrielle Zevin is about two video game designers, Sam and Sadie. They first meet as children in a hospital gaming room in 1987, finding their common love of video games. They run into each other by chance eight years later and team up to become game-designing superstars. Near the end of the book Sam designs a game which features Go. The characters in the game briefly explain the rules and then play Go for a few pages.

European books featuring Go include German Günter Karau's war thriller "Go Oder Doppelspeil Im Untergrund", which features Go on the cover, Adolf Muschg's "Im sommer des Hasen" (1965), French Georges Perec's "La Vie mode d`emploi" (Life a User's Manual) and "La Disparition", and Norwegian "Absolutt alt" by Simen Hagerup (2004).

Non-fiction works that mention Go include:

"Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid" by Douglas Hofstadter
"Infinity and the Mind" by Rudy Von B Rucker
"Fearful Symmetry" by Anthony Zee
"The Math Book" by Clifford A. Pickover
"Finding Moonshine" by Marcus du Sautoy
"The Japanese Miracle Men" by Ralph Hewins
"The Planiverse: Computer Contact with a Two-Dimensional World" by A. K. Dewdney
"Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" by Richard P. Feynman
"Laws of the Game" by Manfred Eigen and Ruthild Winkler
"God Human Animal Machine" by Meghan O'Gieblyn
"The Creative Act: A Way of Being" by Rick Reuben