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The author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude returns with a devilishly entertaining novel about an international backgammon hustler who thinks he's psychic. Too bad about the tumor in his face. Alexander Bruno travels the world playing high stakes backgammon and hunting for amateur “whales” who think they can challenge him. Lately he’s had a run of bad luck, not helped by the blot that has emerged in his field of vision, which forces him to look at the board sideways. As the blot grows larger, his game gets worse, until, at an opulent mansion in Berlin, he passes out in the middle of a match and receives an alarming diagnosis. Out of money and out of friends, he turns to the only person who can help (and the last person he wants to see): a high-rolling former childhood acquaintance who agrees to pay for Bruno’s experimental surgery in Berkeley. But Berkeley is the place where Bruno discovered his psychic gift and where he vowed never to return. There, forced to confront patchouli flashbacks and his uncertain future, he must ask himself: Is he playing the game, or is the game playing him?
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A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of 2016
[A Gambler s Anatomy] . . . is nearly perfect.
The New York Daily News
A thoughtful, first-rate novel, that also happens to be a page-turner.
The New York Times Book Review
An effortless blend of comic hijinks and madcap tragedy. . . . Lethem serves up a punchy, stylish, relentlessly entertaining novel. Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
A Gambler s Anatomy will lead more than one reader to rummage around in the back of their closet (or local toy store) for a backgammon set . . . mesmerizing, twisty, fearless.
San Francisco Chronicle
Mr. Lethem s backgammon writing has a satisfying crunch. It s witty and sexy, too. I m not sure I ve ever before read a love scene that begins with a woman crying out, Double me, gammon me . . . . But this novel quickly bends, like one of Uri Geller s spoons into stranger territory. . . . It s a tragicomedy; it plays at its best like a Twilight Zone episode filmed by the Coen brothers. . . . Mr. Lethem has a touching sense of the lives of obsessive misfits. They re his tribe.
The New York Times
In his new novel, he seems to be channeling (and, as usual, transforming) both Thomas Pynchon and Ian Fleming. . . . In short, just another day in Lethemland. Chicago Tribune
