Striker is the story of a young football player, Prasoon Joshi, whose father, once a top scorer in the Calcutta League, is completely sidelined after being accused by the club of deliberately throwing the winning goal. As a young player struggling to make his mark, Prasoon not only has to battle the ruthless exploitation of the football clubs, his family’s straitened financial circumstances, and his own  elopment as a player, but he has also to exorcise his father’s ghosts. Stopper, on the other hand, is the story of the much older Kamal Guha, a veteran player with an eclectic record, now playing the final game of his career... Both novellas brilliantly capture the heady highs, and the crushing lows, the
heroism – and the ignominy – of sport. However, it is always the game, and the
action on the field, that is the real hero of Moti Nandy’s writing.

About the Author

A former sports journalist, Moti Nandy has written about the lives of sports people – footballers in particular – in a series of remarkable Bengali novels. Arunava Sinha’s translation of Sankar’s Chowringhee won him the 2007 Crossword Vodafone award for Best Translated Book. He lives in New Delhi and is an Internet professional by day.