Gordon Burn spent a year travelling with the professional snooker circus, from Hong Kong and China to out-of-season seaside resorts in the North of England and cliff-hanging finals in Sheffield. In this book he records the wheeling and dealing, the intense rivalries, the petty jealousies, the jubilation and heartbreak of personalities such as Stephen Hendry, Jimmy White, Steve Davis and Alex Higgins. Burn won the Whitbread Prize for the Best First Novel of 1991 with Alma Cogan.