It is Spring 2002 in the Black Country, with local elections looming. A mosque is being built on the site where iconic steelworks once dominated the town. "The Tipton Three" are in Guantanamo where the whites-only British National Party expect to win new seats on the council. Rob, once a professional soccer player like his famous father, is now a tracksuited teaching assistant, and a schoolboy whom he is teaching to read is stabbed in a gang attack. Within this cauldron, two local soccer teams, split along racial lines, play a Sunday league decider, billed by the press as "a match to spark race war." While England plays Argentina for the World Cup, the characters gather Rob, Glenn, Jim, Tom, and Stacey behind the bar to see what hope and solidarity they still share.
Arvustused
Very possibly the best novel about the World Cup -- Esquire * Esquire *
Anthony Cartwright was born in 1973 in Dudley. He worked as an English teacher in schools in London and the Midlands for over ten years, and is currently a First Story writer-in-residence at Abbey Manor College in Lewisham. His debut novel The Afterglow won a Betty Trask award was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, James Tait Black Memorial Prize and John Llewellyn Rhys Prize; his second novel Heartland was also shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was adapted for BBC Radio 4's Book at Bedtime; his third novel How I Killed Margaret Thatcher was shortlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize and was a Fiction Uncovered 2013 selection. His new novel Iron Towns is forthcoming from Serpent's Tail in 2016.
