Eleven by Christian Ryan

A gripping eleven-sided biography and audacious re-reckoning of nonfiction's velocities by the author of Golden Boy, voted Wisden Cricket Monthly's 'Best Cricket Book Ever'
'Groundbreaking, brilliant and unforgettable. Christian has aimed to create a certain kind of work of art and he has pulled it off. It is one of those books that will give more and more to the reader each time they go back into it.' - Malcolm Knox
Watk. Raja. Jane (i). Shirvan. Cricket – the way it brings emotion and life and pain and memory and regret all hauntingly and combustively to light. John. Jane (iii). Shivalkar. Men and women whose destinies don't make sense.
Ask, was there a minute when the decline of West Indies cricket didn't have to turn out that way? What can be gained poring over the crooked lines of lives forged by, or infiltrated by, cricket?
Hold fast to dreams that stay vivid by disappearing: on Newcastle's streets, Darwin's.
This book moves like no other with humour and verve and tragedy. Frank. RR. Vowles. Carmino.
'A book that is about vulnerability, failure, chance, fate, the nature of memory, and the fleeting moments that start like any other day but become sliding doors that close behind you with a chilling finality ... in its imaginative scope, its daring, its ambition and its skill, it stands apart.' - Wisden Cricket Monthly, Book of the Month
'A masterful, poetic book that connects cricketers to each other and the reader to the soul of the game. Ryan is a sportswriting genius, the best we have.' - Tony Wilson
'An interesting and different way of portraying a story . . . Delves into the human aspect and not just the usual cricket numbers.' - Michael Holding
'You won't have read a cricket book like it; Christian Ryan's prose is clipped, rhythmic and absorbing.' Jason Steger, The Booklist

'like nothing else I have read on the subject of cricket or indeed anything else . . . Eleven: We Burn Them in the Sun is an engrossing and rewarding experience' - Martin Chandler, CricketWeb, 5-Star review