Hi, Will,
This is a true story about being sent by a Canadian psychic to play cricket around the former Soviet Bloc.
Travelling by Skoda, I met Croatian winemakers, Bulgarian medical students, Ukrainian millionaires, and Slovak gardeners all playing the Englishman’s game with a passion. They played on ice inside former Soviet missile factories, beside minefields on Adriatic islands, in Slovenian V-shaped valleys, and in Belarusian carparks. And in between, I discovered a web of human trafficking, orgies on the wicket, mafia involvement, spies and murder. The game in Eastern Europe has a history stretching back to the Napoleonic Wars.
It was originally self-published as Slogging The Slavs, and after becoming a Balkan best-seller, it got snapped up by Canongate (Batting on the Bosphorus – out this week), Penguin South Africa (Batting in the Baltic – out last month), and Douglas & McIntyre for the US/Canada (out next spring). Crucially, this means the distribution no longer relies on me flogging copies out of my bedroom.
It just got picked as Book of the Week for BBC Radio 4 – (21st-25th July). You can tune in online at:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/book_week.shtml
Thanks, Angus.




