On Snooker: A Brilliant Exploration of the Game and the Characters Who Play It. - Hardcover

Richler, Mordecai

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1585741795 ISBN 13: 9781585741793

Publisher: Lyons Pr, 2001

Synopsis

The award-winning novelist--a self-confessed former "teenage poolroom hustler"--brings the enormously popular game of British snooker and its players colorfully to life.

About this title

About the Author

MORDECAI RICHLER, the author of such distinguished novels as The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, St. Urbain's Horseman, and Solomon Gursky Was Here, was born in Montreal in 1931. He has won the Commonwealth Prize, the Paris Review Humor Prize, and was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay of Duddy Kravitz. Over the years he has contributed to Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Esquire, Harper s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Yorker.

From the Back Cover

Outrageously funny, passionate and thoroughly researched on snooker tables from Montreal's The Main to Dublin, On Snooker is a book that lovers of Richler and of great sports writing will cherish. It is not just a lifelong fan's memoir: it takes us on an entertaining journey through the story and world of snooker, from the odd origins of the game - born the illegitimate child of billiards on a British Indian Army base in the nineteenth century - to the now wildly popular World Championship at the Crucible in Sheffield, England (even at its first televised inception in 1985, 18.5 million viewers stayed up past midnight to watch). On the way we meet the great players - the central figure of the book is Stephen Hendry, probably the most talented snooker player ever - and snooker's bad boy champions. On Snooker is a brilliant, witty and compact look at the game of snooker - past and present - from a masterful storyteller. (6 1/4 x 9 1/4, 214 pages)

Reviews

Renowned novelist and lifelong snooker devotee Mordechai Richler (The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz) presents On Snooker, a study of the game's history, development and major players, as well as a lively and amusing personal narrative. Richler's book covers more than a century: from snooker's 1875 inception, as a pastime for British soldiers in India, to its later naming the word is a corruption of the French word for cadet (neux), which derived from its founders' observation that they were all beginners at the game to the author's own covert teenage snooker obsession and hustling endeavors in Montreal. This sports-history-cum-memoir, part of which will be published in the New Yorker, should delight both Richler fans and game enthusiasts. ( July)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The recently deceased Richler (Barney's Version) was an internationally renowned novelist with a lifelong passion for snooker, an offshoot of billiards. This is his personalized general introduction to the game and its best players. In style it reads like an extended magazine piece on the milieu of the mostly British snooker subculture. The highlights are the descriptions of the players, particularly the less savory ones, but overall the book is haphazardly organized and too often heads off on tangents of questionable appeal. This short work is of interest primarily to fans of snooker or of the author's fiction. John Maxymuk, Robeson Lib., Rutgers Univ., Camden, NJ
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Lyons Pr
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1585741795
• ISBN 13: 9781585741793
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 194