Playing Days

by Benjamin Markovits

In print for the first time in the United States, acclaimed novelist Benjamin Markovits’s Playing Days is a mostly autobiographical narrative concerning the author’s season playing minor league professional basketball in Germany and the love affair with another player’s estranged wife that ushers him into adulthood.

Growing up in Texas, Ben experienced basketball as a mostly solitary pursuit, one he gave up after riding the bench in high school. But as his college classmates prepare for the real world, Ben is seized by an idea. All he needs is a video camera, an empty court, and his mother’s German citizenship.

Improbably, he lands a roster spot on a lower division pro team in Landshut, forty-five minutes outside of Munich. It’s Ben’s first taste of competition in years, not to mention his first job. And like most jobs, it’s defined by repetition, boredom, and gossip. There’s Charlie, the trash-talking mercenary from Chicago; the coach, Herr Henkel, a recently retired player anxious to justify his paycheck; and Karl (based on the author’s real life relationship with Dirk Nowitski), a gangly teenage prodigy flashing the raw talent that will make him an NBA star. As a group of men learn how to navigate one another, Ben falls in love with the young mother of a teammate’s child, and begins an affair that will change his life.

Wry, poignant, and tenderly observed, Playing Days is an evocative meditation on the joys of youth, the triumphs and terrors of post-college life, and one of the best books ever written about what basketball can mean to an American man.

Genres: Novels, Sports

352 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

Benjamin Markovits (born 1973) is a British-American writer. He is the author of twelve novels, among them a trilogy on the life of poet Lord Byron. Markovits was selected as one of the Best of Young British Novelists by Granta magazine in 2013. In 2016, his novel You Don't Have To Live Like This won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. In 2025, his novel The Rest of Our Lives was shortlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize

Born in 1973 in California, United States, Ben Markovits grew up in Texas, London and Berlin, and studied at Yale University and the University of Oxford. He has worked as a high-school English teacher and as the editor of a left-wing culture magazine. After college, he played professional basketball in Landshut, Germany, for a team in the southern league of the German second division.

Markovits now lives in London, England, where he teaches creative writing at Royal Holloway, University of London.

Reviews

[Tom Mooney]

A thoroughly enjoyable autobiographical novel about a young man coming of age during a season playing pro basketball in Germany. I really love Markovits's style. This is the second of his novels (the other was about basketball too) that I've read this year and they were both profound and entertaining.

[Daniel Rojo]

Durante todo el libro el tono ya entrega el final, muchas frases sueltas también lo hacen, sabemos qué va a pasar y más o menos en qué parte, pero la forma de narrar del protagonista es absorbente. Feliz de haber encontrado este autor.

[Fred Rojo]

Una mezcla de nostalgia y soledad, con la cercanía de vivir el día a día, en una época llena de incertidumbres.

[Steve Holden]

I didn't grab this one with any set expectations. I was perusing a current shelf at the library, and the idea of reading the account of a semi-pro basketball player playing in Germany and his growing up sounded intriguing.

There were parts of interest in this one for me, but the writing style and the lack of enthusiasm expressed by the author in his own life accounts really make most parts quite labor intensive for the reader.

The trials and challenges of attempting to play a sport for a living with all of the barriers of doing it in a foreign country take a backseat in the narrative to the lust and intrigue found in a young woman living in the same flat who has a young daughter whose father happens to be one of his teammates. This just wasn't a great read to me, and in reading it, unsure of the big idea or story the author was truly trying to get across with his account.

[Jill]

A big long sigh of a book. I wanted to like it -- and like how Markovits writes -- but it's hard to feel engaged with a novel when even the author sounds bored.

[Santi Alonso]

Una lectura realmente confortable. Como adolescente que soñó con jugar en ligas importantes de baloncesto y conoce las dinámicas dentro de los vestuarios, me he transportado a lo que acontece en la historia de manera inmediata. 

No obstante, este no es un libro que solo hable de baloncesto, sino que a través de ello se exponen temas como la toma de decisiones, el compromiso, la aleatoriedad del destino y las relaciones interpersonales.

[Nicolás]

Gran libro en donde los personajes cargan con el peso de la novela, a través de diálogos sencillos y manifestaciones humanas (nada de reflexiones ensayísticas tediosas). Esto en contraposición a los pocos eventos que ocurren en el libro, lo cual en este caso es una fortaleza.

Agradezco a Librería Lolita por la invitación a conocer al autor.

Eventualmente volveré a Markovits.

[Jamie]

This story begins promisingly in the early 90s with Markovitts, a recent American college graduate, who hasn't played organized basketball since high school who he gets the idea to send a tryout tape to some European club teams. Unexpectedly, he makes it and ends up playing for a small market squad in Germany and falling for the ex-wife of the only other American on the team, an aging star hoping for his last shot, along the way. Yet this book never went where I hoped it would. Of course, it's a memoir, not a novel, and you can't change real life, but I couldn't help being struck by the lack of humor throughout - as if Markovits, now in his 40s, can't look back upon this part of his life with anything but a great big, tired sigh. The tone is heavy and dour. You might think that a privileged American 20-something getting paid to play basketball, see a new country, and fall in love would have enjoyed himself at least a little and it's a shame that he didn't, or couldn't - even though nothing bad, tragic, or even unfortunate happens to him.

There are some interesting parts though, especially a thread about how athletes, or anyone doing something at a high level, need to come to grips with the fact that there will always be some one better than you - and not just better, but so superior that competition with them is impossible - but that topic has been covered before and better (notably in David Foster Wallace's famous Esquire piece on the US Open, The String Theory). Basketball fans take note though, this part of the story focuses on the differences between players on Markovits's team, notably between a rising star names Kurt (a thinly disguised Dirk Nowitzki) and everyone else.

[Crt]

Not really into basketball so didn't really get the game scenes. Otherwise, quite a nice easy to read story

[Glenn]

To me this was a slow go start to finish.

[Imanol Hammurabi Rodriguez Mac Lean]

Son esos libros que decís. Pah mono no hay pa nada más interesante pa contar? Estás ahí con el narreta to serio todo abulico, medio lerdo, sin pensamiento. Cómo el dice o lo hace por paja o lo hace por obstinación. Realmente es duro entrarle hasta entender que el personaje está en esa. En la nada misma. Una bildungsroman de gente con plata. Pero creo que hay un espacio para la verdad. Hasta en esa vida que se quiere anodina. Si uno mira tanto una vida puede volverse fascinante y eso es lo que hace Markovits. El deporte, el ser bueno, ser el único que pregunta porque quiere respuestas. Un amor de verano. Los que pierden al ganar. Cuando la terminas le agarraste cariño a todos. No es una novela para romper pero si para entibiar algo. Tal vez el corazón.

[Antonia Cruz]

Días de juego es una novela autobiográfica sobre jugar básquet — juego que no entiendo en lo absoluto y me tuvo perdida gran parte del libro—, pero también sobre aceptar la mediocridad y lidiar soltar expectativas de la vida planeada. Me toma.

No me fascinó, creo que está muy bien escrito, combina bien la cadencia lenta de un pueblo chico en Alemania y los tiempos frenéticos de un partido, y ese juego temporal me gustó harto. Pero finalmente no me tocó tanto, quizás porque realmente no sé como imaginarme un bloqueo o un triple.

Igual le doy 3,5

[Felipe Alegre]

Medio aburrido, creo no estar muy emocionado por leer novelas cotidianas, simples, y metidas tan en el presente. Tampoco me copó tanto estar leyendo tanto sobre la vida de este joven basquetbolista y tantos detalles técnicos del juego, suerte que hice tantos años básquet y desde ahí iba entendiendo y entreteniéndome desde ahí, pero siento que sea lo que sea, si está bien escrito el lector se come cualquier cosa, no me pasó. La subió la historia de amor y la final.

[Joel Gladstone]

A melancholy and thoughtful memoir about a young man at a kind of crossroads. Also a memorable sports book, with lots of interesting insights on athletes. He is unafraid it seems to try to know himself, his father and his fellow athletes. Clear eyed even about love, it's sort of about the birth of a writer.

[Rafelmenmell]

Un buen libro de deportes, está en el grupo de la literatura de verdad basada en deportes junto con Open y el del tenis de DFW. El ambiente algo desolado de jugadores acabados en ligas de segunda mezclados con jóvenes emergentes está muy bien desarrollado.

[Scott]

Came to this after Rest of Our LIves - and while I recognised the style I did not connect with this story or its feeling in the same way and so found it somehow disappointing - I could sense the subtle observational style but did not connect with the protagonist almost at all...

[Florina]

"Athletes are basically delusional human beings." Amen.

[Kevin]

to-read

[Alberto]

Bella scoperta Markovits (poi recensito anche sul magazine settimanale delle Gazzetta dello Sport). Bel libro di sport con il basket ben disegnato e coinvolgente anche nelle azioni di gioco (non facile da farsi). Ottima la traduzione dei termini tecnici. Ci sta anche la traballante love story per 300 pagine che qualcosa sanno trasmettere.

[Jeremy Greenfield]

Though I appreciated how this this quasi-autobiographical novel taught me about how Benjamic Markovits made his way to Germany to play basketball, and though I did like parts of the novel because of my love of the game, ultimately this was a slog. Good writing, good thinker, but not my favorite.

[Aaron Lozano]

Interesting read on the life of a minor league basketball player in Europe. Left me feeling like it could have been better. Not a bad read though!

[Brandon]

I like basketball, and I sort of liked this book. The premise is interesting: a recent college grad and aspiring writer heads to Germany to land a spot on a second division club. Despite the team earning a promotion to the first division by book's end, the story and writing doesn't live up to that sort of excitement. I felt the romantic entanglement our hero finds himself in to be a bore and this sideshow is probably what leaves the story a bit flat.