There’s Always This Year
Hanif Abdurraqib (Allen Lane)
The latest book from US poet and essayist Hanif Abdurraqib can take its place proudly alongside the Spike Lee movies that the author loves. As a young basketball player growing up in one of the poorest areas in Columbus, Ohio, Abdurraqib had plenty of heroes, from the University of Michigan’s Fab Five to LeBron James – but much of the talent never made it out of the hood. This cultural reflection “on basketball and ascension” blends his own story with the narrative of James’s stellar career: it asks heartbreaking questions, and answers them with the profound intelligence and breathtaking poetry you’d expect of this MacArthur “genius grant” recipient.
Godwin
Joseph O’Neill (4th Estate)
You may wonder, after reading the first chapter, why this counts as a sports book at all. The opening of Joseph O’Neill’s novel follows an earnest writer as the co-operative she helped to found begins to, well, founder. But soon a new storyline emerges: the chaotic efforts of two brothers to find and sign an elusive footballing prodigy. What follows is part shaggy dog story, part devastating social commentary. O’Neill’s first book in a decade is funnier than Netherland, his cricket novel, with characters as recognisable as they are maddening (one is memorably described as “a tornado of unreliability and superfluous scheming”). When people say that sport reflects society, this is what they mean.
