The next pick for the Tennis Abstract book club is Álvaro Enrigue’s 2013 novel Sudden Death. Enrigue is Mexican, and he writes in Spanish. An English translation was published in 2017.
How could you not want to read this?
Sudden Death begins with a brutal tennis match that could decide the fate of the world. The bawdy Italian painter Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Quevedo battle it out before a crowd that includes Galileo, Mary Magdalene, and a generation of popes who would throw Europe into the flames. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII behead Anne Boleyn, and her crafty executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time.
I hope you’ll read along with us! We’re tentatively aiming to discuss in late May, just before the French Open gets underway.
Comments are open, so if you have thoughts about the book you’d like to share, or topics you think we should put on the agenda for the podcast episode about the book, please leave them here.
Past book club selections / podcast episodes: