The Chess Master is a story of escape and salvation, and the clue for both is chess. The protagonist, Wang Yisheng, undergoes a gradual transformation from ""chess fool"" to ""chess master"" - from an alienated young man obsessed with the material needs of life to a spiritually enlightened transmitter of the Chinese tradition. By reversing the pervasive anti-traditional trend in modern Chinese literature and eschewing any overt influence from Western literature, A Cheng has created in the ""The Chess Master"" a radically new fiction which is both thoroughly modern and deeply imbued with the Chinese tradition. He has also achieved a ""disengaged"" realism and demonstrated a respect for form.