Greatest of All Time
By (Author) Alex Allison
Translated by Priscilla Layne
John Murray Press
Dialogue Books
30th January 2025
30th January 2025
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Sports fiction
Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
823.92
Hardback
368
Width 164mm, Height 238mm, Spine 34mm
560g
Samson Kabarebe will one day be the name on everyone's lips. At only eighteen, it's clear he is destined to join the greats in the pantheon of football gods. Set to change the fortunes of a relegation-threatened Premier League team, he takes the place of another striker - a homegrown star, our narrator.
Our narrator knows he should feel slighted, yet he's drawn to Samson's ebullience, his talent, his petulance and his beauty. As their relationship grows, our narrator must grapple with the confines of masculinity, the isolation that comes from the threat of scandal and the fragility and power of an athlete's body, underscored by Allison's examination of how much of ourselves we sacrifice in the pursuit of greatness.Alex Allison (b. 1991) lives and works in London. Alex is a graduate of the Centre for New Writing MA at University of Manchester. His debut novel, The Art of the Body, was published in 2019. It won a Somerset Maugham Award and was longlisted for the Desmond Elliot Prize. Alex is a fan and co-owner of AFC Wimbledon.