Eleven

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 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

Praise for Christian Ryan:

On one level, this is an incredibly accomplished biography of irreconcilable personality clashes, the sad tale of opportunities missed and promise unfulfilled. It is also the best cricket book in recent years not written by someone called Gideon Haigh. - Sun Herald on Golden Boy

Thoroughly researched and eminently readable - Weekend Australian on Golden Boy

If this were not a sports book, Ryan's biography of Kim Hughes, a triumph of writing and research, would be recognised as a masterpiece of recent Australian non-fiction. - Malcolm Knox on Golden Boy

Ryan's unauthorised biography details the rise and fall of Hughes in compelling fashion. - Adelaide Advertiser on Golden Boy

This brilliant book has been acclaimed as a masterpiece-one of the best ever written about Australian cricket-in every review I have seen published, and deservedly so. - Herald Sun on Golden Boy

The Hughes era is beautifully covered by Christian Ryan's new book Golden Boy. It is an epic piece ... Ryan's book is one of the best ever written about Australian cricket. - Daily Telegraph on Golden Boy

Golden Boy is an insightful and somewhat controversial examination of Australia's cricketing history ... a must-read for the serious cricket fan. - Bookseller+Publisher on Golden Boy

What this compilation of essays captures, quite superbly, is not simply the achievements of Australian cricket but the way our culture has been infused with its spirit, often as not providing the focus, the metaphor, through which we define ourselves. And, like the best of cricket writing, it's also elegiac. - Sydney Morning Herald on Australia: Story of a cricket country

Ryan is an adventurer, able to create masterpieces out of scraps. Even the best cricket writing tends to be orthodox. Ryan's is avant garde, but nostalgic, too. Don't try that at home. - Greg Baum, The Age on Feeling Is the Thing That Happens in 1000th of a Second

A book of eccentric brilliance, it also aches. The ache is that cricket is dangerously close to becoming more real in distant memory than in the present. - Malcolm Knox, Sydney Morning Herald on Feeling Is the Thing That Happens in 1000th of a Second

Free-thinking, idiosyncratic, slightly off-the-wall and quite brilliant meditation on Eagar, photography, 1975 and a changing world. - Tanya Aldred, The Guardian on Feeling Is the Thing That Happens in 1000th of a Second

Fascinating study of Eagar's art before the internet. - Mike Atherton, The Times on Feeling Is the Thing That Happens in 1000th of a Second

The photos are spectacular. Ryan's words elevate them. A wicketkeeper leaping in vain to catch a throw from the outfield is the basis for ruminations on mortality and whether a photograph can foreshadow death. - Wisden Cricket Monthly (Book of the Month) on Feeling Is the Thing That Happens in 1000th of a Second