Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket.
When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world.
Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters.
Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.
But on the court, she is not alone.
She is with her pa.
She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent.
She is with the players who have come before her.
She is in awe.
An unforgettable coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel is a moving exploration of the closeness of sisterhood, the immigrant experience, and the collective overcoming of grief.
‘With this gorgeous debut, Maroo blows most of the competition off the court’ – The Times
‘Stunning…spare, tender, brilliantly achieved…a novel that unfolds in silences…and dares to leave much unsaid’ – The Guardian
‘A beautiful and evocative novel about grief, about growing up, about losing and winning. The people and places in this book will stay with me for a long time’ – Sally Rooney
Longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2024
A Book of the Year in The Economist, The Independent, The Week, The New York Times and The Guardian
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