Book description
Fresh out of college and uncertain how to proceed with life, the
narrator of Ben Markovits' Playing Days finds himself drifting towards
a career that once obsessed his father - professional basketball.
Gaining a place on a minor league German team, he leaves Texas and
lands in the small rather desolate town of Landshut, playing
basketball with an eclectic group of teammates, training for most of
the day and then trying to find ways to fill the rest of it. It's an
odd, isolated existence, punctuated by the intense excitement - and
often intense disappointment - of the game. But then he meets Anke, a
young single mother who happens to be the former wife of one of his
teammates; and their tentative, burgeoning relationship becomes as
significant and as life changing as the game itself. Beautifully
written, Playing Days is entirely recognisable in its depiction of the
first long summer after university. Tinged with the melancholy and
nostalgia of early steps into adulthood, it's the story of a young
man's first experience of adult love, and of the discovery of his own limitations.
Benjamin Markovits grew up in Texas, London and Berlin. He left
an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the
Romantics to become a writer. He has written three previous novels,
The Syme Papers, Either Side of Winter and Imposture. Markovits
currently lives in London, teaching creative writing at Royal
Holloway, University of London.
