This book is surprisingly good. The author does a great job at engaging the reader and keep the conflict building with every scene. Plus, there’s a lot of cool details to life of a tennis player that I wasn’t aware, not having played myself. I really enjoyed this book. Definitely recommended. -Amazon Review
Tennis Clubbed, Snubbed
and Rubbity-Dub Dubbed
A NOVEL SET IN THE LAND OF THE RISING SUN …
In historically rich Yokohama, the wicked shiver of the tennis snub pits David Adams against K: a puffed up, xenophobic tyrant who rules over the courts of a club that has as its anthem, ironically, the promotion of international friendship.
Off the courts, David labors on a “McContract” at a Japanese university while married to the proverbial nail that sticks up, a fiery medical doctor who rides a 1200cc rice-rocket Yamaha. A heady tale of comparative culture and revenge, Tennis Clubbed goes down like a cocktail of pure fire … served up in the hall of the mountain king.
Incredible fun! I read it in one sitting.
This author loves long, creative sentences, semi-obscure references, and incredible descriptions.
The book is basically all about a tennis rivalry in Japan, between a Japanese gentleman and a Gaijin. While I have not lived in Japan, I know people who have grown up there, and also people who have worked there as adults. Their commentary on the structure of the Japanese culture makes this book even more interesting.
The author has obviously spent time working in Japan and can explain nuances most Americans miss. He does so in a manner that makes for hilarious reading. -Amazon Review
About the Author
Eric Madeen is an associate professor of modern literature at Tokyo City University and an adjunct professor at Keio University. He’s an award-winning author whose writing has been published widely – in Time, Asia Week, The East, The Daily Yomiuri, Tokyo Journal, Kyoto Journal, Metropolis, Mississippi Review, ANA’s inflight magazine Wingspan, Japanophile, The Pretentious Idea, several academic journals and so on. He has been featured in several radio interviews (9 in the USA and 1 in Japan) and various print media.
From a very early age reading and writing have been as natural to him as breathing. Sharpened in then world’s largest ad agency Dentsu for clients as diverse as Mazda and Sony (Sony No Baloney!) his prose allows for an immediate emotional entry into a sublime, exotic land. Specifically, his two-plus years as a Peace Corps volunteer in francophone Gabon, Africa, where he built a primary school complex in an equatorial village surrounded by rain forest, inspired his multicultural love story Water Drumming in the Soul, which resonates with the personal and passionate all the way through to the heart-wrenching end.
His most recent novel Massage World is a super high-octane thriller. By turns erotic and exotic but always zesty, its plot twists and linkage are tight and full of surprises … peopled as it is with a rogues gallery found in the nether reaches of a Dionysian dream. Sandwiched between the two is the travel essay compilation Asian Trail Mix: True Tales from Borneo to Japan which scales down the sprawl of Asia by laser focusing on the unique and revelatory in sharp, crisp prose. Originally from a Chicago suburb, Eric Madeen lives with his family in Yokohama.
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