Voted Cricket Book of the Year at the 2010 British Sports Book Awards, Golden Boy is a blistering expose of the tumultuous Lillee/Marsh/Chappells era of Australian cricket, as viewed through the lens of flawed genius Kim Hughes.
Christian Ryan was the founding editor of the national current affairs magazine The Monthly. He has edited Wisden Cricketers' Almanack Australia, Inside Edge magazine, Wisden Cricket Monthly and has worked as a journalist with The Guardian newspaper.
Christian Ryan's Golden Boy has this brawny lyricism ... It's
really alive, that book. Like a great Australian novel. Hughes
personifies something mercurial, ethereal, this artistic flair
alongside these macho, rugged, brawny bruisers like Marsh and
Lillee. It's told with such lyricism and tempo. I found it
absolutely enthralling and a real revelation.
*William Fiennes, member of Wisden Cricket Monthly's Best Cricket
Book Ever judging panel*
At once unputdownable and also unpickupable, because if you pick it
up you will eventually finish it, and what are you going to do
then?
*Guardian*
It made me laugh, it told me things, it reminded me why I love the
subject I'm reading about and it put a series of images in my head
that I won't ever forget. It's audacious, it's got chutzpah, it's
done with a lyrical flourish. I didn't know cricket books could be
written like this.
*Phil Walker, editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly*
A cracking read ... An almost tragic but compelling tale of how
Hughes tried hard - and failed - to fit his smiling personality
into the hard-faced world of his country's uniquely macho and badly
moustached team.
*The Observer*
Graphic ... Shocking ... Devastating ... If half of what we read
here is true, two Australian legends should hang their heads in
shame.
*The Times*
A valuable archive of the professional cricketer's lot during the
1980s - paltry wages, petty officials, vermin-infested hotels and
astonishing levels of alcohol consumption ... a fascinating account
of Australian cricket's leanest years.
*Times Literary Supplement*
Absolutely superb, one of the best cricket books I've read.
*The Wisden Cricketer*
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