A01=Benjamin Markovits
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Author_Benjamin Markovits
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Basketball
Category1=Fiction
Category=FA
Category=FBA
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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eq_fiction
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_modern-contemporary
eq_nobargain
Format=BC
Format_Paperback
Language_English
Love
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
Self discovery
softlaunch
Sport
Product details
- ISBN 9780571251810
- Format: Paperback
- Weight: 380g
- Dimensions: 136 x 215mm
- Publication Date: 03 Jun 2010
- Publisher: Faber & Faber
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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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.
