Although William Kotzwinkle has generally maintained a division between the books which he has written with a mature audience in mind and those which he has designed for younger readers, he has observed that "only in recent times have we had a classification called 'children's books,' and it isn't a particularly good thing to have." His very popular novelization of the film E.T. (1982) was a book which he hoped would communicate to adults as much as to children "a powerful archetype that is dawning for humanity," and The Game of Thirty, while specifically directed toward an adult audience, links Kotzwinkle's concern with evil to his very strong feeling for what he calls "this fleeting thing, the child's mind."

In discussing the origins of The Exile (1987), Kotzwinkle commented that "Nazi Germany has infiltrated the psyche everywhere." The Game of Thirty follows this thought into the...