Synopses & Reviews
Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after riding the bench in high school. But as his college classmates prepare for the real world, Ben is seized by an idea. All he needs is a video camera, an empty court, and his mother's German citizenship.
Improbably, he lands a roster spot on a lower division pro team in Landshut, forty-five minutes outside Munich. It's Ben's first taste of competition in years, not to mention his first job. And like most jobs, it's defined by repetition, boredom, and gossip. There's Charlie, the trash-talking mercenary from Chicago; the coach, Herr Henkel, a recently retired player anxious to justify his paycheck; and Karl (based on the author's real life encounters with Dirk Nowitzki), a gangly teenage prodigy flashing the raw talent that will make him an NBA star. As a group of men learn how to navigate one another, Ben falls in love with the young mother of a teammate's child, and begins an affair that will change his life.
Review
“Excellent.” The Times (London)
Review
“Markovits is an exceptionally adept chronicler of human interaction… in this elegant, thoughtful novel.” New Statesman
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“Markovits draws himself with exceptional delicacy…This is the territory of the rites-of-passage novel, but it is territory that the author navigates with subtlety and poignancy.” The Guardian
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“PLAYING DAYS delivers a sharply honest account of the mostly selfish impulses of a young man…astutely rendering the restlessness of that ill-fitting period between schooling and manhood, in which mettle needs to be found before it can be tested.” The Independent
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“PLAYING DAYS…succeeds in combining an emotionally honest coming-of-age narrative with a convincing evocation of the artificial, cynical, yet curiously idealistic, world of preofessional sport.” The Times Literary Supplement
Review
“Playing Days is a humble and sensitive portrayal of a young adult trying to find his feet on the basketball court and in the world…The subtlety of Playing Days is that though the subjects for interpretation are teased out, the ultimate meaning is left poised for our own consideration.” The Financial Times
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“Markovitss plot is as smoothly nonchalant as a sea breeze in summer, yet the reader is enticed by his subtle yet powerful characterization and a wonderfully lucid writing style…His story becomes almost unbearably appealing as it ratches up towards a magnificently suspenseful and apt conclusion.” The Sunday Business Post
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“This unusual autobiographical episode is lit up by Markovits eye for psychological and social detail…Both matter of fact and acutely observant, it wears its wisdom with a shrug.” The Independent
Synopsis
In print for the first time in the United States, acclaimed novelist Benjamin Markovits's Playing Days is a mostly autobiographical narrative concerning the author's season playing minor league professional basketball in Germany and the love affair with another player's estranged wife that ushers him into adulthood.
Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after riding the bench in high school. But as his college classmates prepare for the real world, Ben is seized by an idea. All he needs is a video camera, an empty court, and his mother's German citizenship.
Improbably, he lands a roster spot on a lower division pro team in Landshut, forty-five minutes outside of Munich. It's Ben's first taste of competition in years, not to mention his first job. And like most jobs, it's defined by repetition, boredom, and gossip. There's Charlie, the trash-talking mercenary from Chicago; the coach, Herr Henkel, a recently retired player anxious to justify his paycheck; and Karl (based on the author's real life relationship with Dirk Nowitski), a gangly teenage prodigy flashing the raw talent that will make him an NBA star. As a group of men learn how to navigate one another, Ben falls in love with the young mother of a teammate's child, and begins an affair that will change his life.
Wry, poignant, and tenderly observed, Playing Days is an evocative meditation on the joys of youth, the triumphs and terrors of post-college life, and one of the best books ever written about what basketball can mean to an American man.
About the Author
Benjamin Markovits grew up in Texas, London, Oxford and Berlin. He left an unpromising career as a professional basketball player to study the Romantics—an experience he wrote about in Playing Days, a fictional memoir forthcoming in the U.S. from Harper Perennial. He has written essays, stories and reviews for, among other publications, The New York Times, Granta, The Guardian, London Review of Books and The Paris Review. The author of six novels, including a trilogy on the life of Lord Byron, he was a fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard and won a Pushcart Prize in 2009. Granta selected him as one of the Best of Young British Novelists in 2013. Markovits lives in London and is married, with a daughter and a son.