MATE: a novel in twenty games deals with marriage as a chess game. What distinguishes MATE from other stories and novels about the life and death of a relationship is its radical correlation of the actions of a husband and wife to chess moves. The logic of the novel suggests: chess is war reduced to a game; marriage is chess; marriage is war. That is the tragedy-marriage, as a human institution and human desire, is innately tragic. In marriage, one or the other partner feel obliged to annihilate the other in a struggle for...what? This is the central question and riddle of MATE.