Sooley
By John Grisham
ONE MAN
Seventeen-year-old Samuel Sooleyman comes from a village in South Sudan, a war-torn country where one third of the population is a refugee. His great love is basketball: his prodigious leap and lightning speed make him an exceptional player. And it may also bring him his big chance: he has been noticed by a coach taking a youth team to the United States.
ONE HOPE
If he gets through the tournament, Samuel’s life will change beyond recognition. But it’s the longest of long shots. His talent is raw and uncoached. There are hundreds of better-known players ahead of him. And he must leave his family behind, at least at the beginning.
ONE CHANCE
As American success beckons, devastating news reaches Samuel from home. Caught between his dream and the nightmare unfolding thousands of miles away, ‘Sooley’, as he’s nicknamed by his classmates, must make hard choices about his future. This quiet, dedicated boy must do what no other player has achieved in the history of his chosen game: become a legend in twelve short months.
Global bestseller John Grisham takes you to a different kind of court in this gripping and incredibly moving novel that showcases his storytelling powers in an entirely new light.
‘Grisham’s books are smart, imaginative, and funny, populated by complex interesting people’ – The Washington Post
‘A superb, instinctive storyteller’ – The Times
350+ million copies, 45 languages, 9 blockbuster films:
NO ONE WRITES DRAMA LIKE JOHN GRISHAM
About the author:
Beginning with The Firm in 1991, John Grisham has published at least one #1 bestseller every year. His books have been translated into 45 languages and have sold over 350 million copies worldwide. Ten have been adapted to film, including The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and A Time To Kill. His Theodore Boone series for young readers is now in development at Netflix. An avid sports fan, he has written two novels about football, one about baseball, and in 2021 he published Sooley, a story set in the world of college basketball. His lone work of non-fiction, The Innocent Man, was adapted into a six-part Netflix docuseries.
He is the two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize For Legal Fiction and was distinguished with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award For Fiction.
When he’s not writing, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his recent fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice systems.
A graduate of Mississippi State University and Ole Miss Law School, he lives on a farm in central Virginia, around the corner from the youth baseball complex he built in 1996. He still serves as its Commissioner.
ISBN: 9781529368048
Publisher: Hachette
