'Terrific . . . A bold book [and] a quietly brilliant one' - A. D. Miller, author of Snowdrops ‘WOW. Western Lane is glorious. You’ll want to read it over and over again.‘ - Aravind Adiga, author of The White Tiger A taut, enthralling first novel about grief, sisterhood, and a young athlete‘s struggle to transcend herself. Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo. But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe. An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other.

Hashim Khan, the legendary squash rackets player, established a record of victories that has no parallel in the game. This book is his story. The style may startle the reader at first. Hashim never learned to write English, or even speak it in the textbook fashion. So he "talked" the book in a great number of sessions, in the court and out of it, with Richard E. Randall, one of his students and a professional writer. The collaboration worked well. The book gives Hashim as he actually thinks and talks. It gives detailed instruction on the Khan grip, stroke, stance, court strategy, ploys, and favorite combination shots, plus a wealth of observations on fitness, stamina, and gamesmanship.