| June 29, 2012 | ||
| 7:00 pm | to | 9:00 pm |
Friday 29 June at 7 pm at Wanstead Library
Gold is Chris Cleave’s third novel, following Incendiary (2005), and the bestselling The Other Hand (2008). In Gold, the extremes of human capacity are explored – from the peak of athletic condition to the nadir of ill health. Chris’s research included a fortnight at Great Ormond Street Hospital as well as a lot of time at velodromes and on bikes. Like The Other Hand, it has wonderfully well-drawn characters, a heart-breaking dilemma at its core, and a compelling narrative full of drama, tension and strong emotion.
Chris Cleave says: “London, the subject of all my fiction to date, won the right to stage the 2012 Olympics on the day before my first novel, Incendiary, was published in tragic circumstances. I knew then that I would cover my city’s Olympics one day – not as a reporter but as a novelist, shining a more enduring light on subjects that disappear all too quickly from other media. In Gold I uncover the private lives of athletes – their darkness, hope and doubt in the long unseen twilight that frames the single fortnight every four years when the world’s cameras turn upon them.
“It’s a project that’s taken me several years of research, in which I’ve not only talked to the athletes but also pushed my own body to its limits and beyond to see how it felt. I wanted to write a timeless story of sickness and health, ambition and failure. I wanted to understand something that I knew the sports pages didn’t have space to teach me: just how much it can mean to win – and to lose – the race of your life … I hope that if you read Gold you will be moved by it, as I was moved by the courage and passion of its subjects.”
Gold is published by Sceptre in hardback at £16.99.
The Other Hand is published by Sceptre in paperback at £8.99.
Tickets £5 from Newham Bookshop or Wanstead Library, telephone: 020 8708 7400
