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Recommended by Paul, City Lights Books

Aging sportswriter W.G. Karunasena's liver is shot. Years of drinking have seen to that. As his health fades, he embarks with his friend Ari on a madcap search for legendary cricket bowler Pradeep Mathew. En route they discover a mysterious six-fingered coach, a Tamil Tiger warlord, and startling truths about their beloved sport and country. A prizewinner in Sri Lanka, and a sensation in India and Britain, The Legend of Pradeep Mathew is a nimble and original debut that blends cricket and the history of modern Sri Lanka into a vivid and comedic swirl.

Praise for The Legend of Pradeep Mathew:
"This is one of the most astonishing novels I've read in a long, long while. To refer to The Legend of Pradeep Mathew as a book about cricket is a sin tantamount to calling Moby Dick a book about a whale. I have not felt that tingle at the back of my neck since my first experiences with Murakami and Bolaño."
—Jamil Zaidi, The Elliott Bay Book Company

"If you love cricket read this, if you love novels read this, and if you love both, you know this one is for you."
—Mohammed Hanif

“The strength of the book lies in its energy, its mixture of humor and heartwrenching emotion, its twisting narrative, its playful use of cricketing facts and characters, and its occasional blazing anger about what Sri Lanka has done to itself. . . . This book could be the best thing to happen to your life.”
—The Guardian

“A delightful novel: reading it feels like a long dilatory conversation with an agreeable drunk companion at a Press Club somewhere, with assertions made and defended by diagrams penciled on paper napkins. . . . A baggy Test match of a novel. It charms because of its grouchiness, its open-heartedness, its humor and its honesty, obvious most of all when it comes to the obsessive, possessive passion that particularly centers on cricket.”

—Times Literary Supplement