''The Girl Who Played Go'', originally published as ''La Joueuse de Go'', is a 2001 French novel by

Shan Sa Shan Sa is the pseudonym of Yan Ni (born October 26, 1972, in Beijing, China), a French author and painter. ''The Girl Who Played Go'' was the first of her novels to be published outside France, and won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens (a prize vo ...

set during the Japanese occupation of

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer Manc ...

. It tells the story of a 16-year-old Chinese girl who is exceptionally good at the game of Go, and her game with a young Japanese officer. It was translated into English in 2003 and has been translated into 32 languages in total. The novel won a number of prizes, including the

Prix Goncourt des Lycéens The Prix Goncourt des Lycéens is a French literary award created in 1987 as a sort of younger sibling of Prix Goncourt, a prestigious prize for French language literature. The ten members of the Académie Goncourt select twelve literary works as ...

(Prix Goncourt of the High-school students) in 2001 and the

Kiriyama Prize The Kiriyama Prize was an international literary award awarded to books about the Pacific Rim and South Asia. Its goal was to encourage greater understanding among the peoples and nations of the region. Established in 1996, the prize was last awar ...

for fiction in 2004. In 2004, the novel was adapted into a German stage production which premiered at

Freies Werkstatt Theater Freies Werkstatt-Theater is a theatre in Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, ...

References

2001 French novels Prix Goncourt winning works category:Go books French novels adapted into plays Novels set in the 1930s Novels set in Manchukuo Novels set in Liaoning Novels set in Heilongjiang Novels set in Tokyo Novels by Shan Sa {{Europe-novel-stub