Godwin

Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the UK, is a desperate young football agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as “Godwin” – an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Messi.

Narrated in turn by Mark and his work colleague Lakesha Williams, the novel is both a tale of family and migration, and an international adventure story that implicates the brothers in the beauty and ugliness of football, the perils and promises of international business, and the dark history of transatlantic money-making.

Joseph O’Neill lives in New York and teaches at Bard College. He is the author of four novels, NETHERLAND which was developed as a feature by Sam Mendes and Christopher Hampton (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008), THE DOG, THIS IS THE LIFE and THE BREEZES, as well as a memoir, BLOOD-DARK TRACK. His short stories have been published in the New Yorker and Harper’s, and his literary criticism has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Irish Times, the Atlantic, Granta and other publications.