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Sooley: The Gripping Bestseller from John Grisham Paperback – 6 Jan. 2022
John Grisham (Author) See search results for this author |
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***THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER***
'A master of plotting and pacing' - New York Times
'With every new book I appreciate John Grisham a little more, for his compassion for the underdog, and his willingness to strike out in new directions' - Entertainment Weekly
ONE MAN. ONE HOPE. ONCE CHANCE TO BECOME A LEGEND.
ONE MAN
Seventeen-year-old Samuel Sooleymon comes from a village in South Sudan, a war-torn country where one third of the population is a refugee. His great love is basketball: his prodigious leap and lightning speed make him an exceptional player. And it may also bring him his big chance: he has been noticed by a coach taking a youth team to the United States.
ONE HOPE
If he gets through the tournament, Samuel's life will change beyond recognition. But it's the longest of long shots. His talent is raw and uncoached. There are hundreds of better-known players ahead of him. And he must leave his family behind, at least at the beginning.
ONE CHANCE
As American success beckons, devastating news reaches Samuel from home. Caught between his dream and the nightmare unfolding thousands of miles away, 'Sooley', as he's nicknamed by his classmates, must make hard choices about his future. This quiet, dedicated boy must do what no other player has achieved in the history of his chosen game: become a legend in twelve short months.
Global bestseller John Grisham takes you to a different kind of court in this gripping and incredibly moving novel that showcases his storytelling powers in an entirely new light.
'Grisham's books are smart, imaginative, and funny, populated by complex interesting people' - The Washington Post
'A superb, instinctive storyteller' - The Times
350+ million copies, 45 languages, 9 blockbuster films:
NO ONE WRITES DRAMA LIKE JOHN GRISHAM
- Print length368 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHodder Paperbacks
- Publication date6 Jan. 2022
- Dimensions12.8 x 3 x 19.6 cm
- ISBN-101529368049
- ISBN-13978-1529368048
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Product description
Review
The joy of a Grisham novel is turning the pages as the plot propels you forward . . . Suffice it to say SOOLEYfollows the familiar Grisham playbook - short chapters, plenty of foreshadowing, and a rapid-fire prose that's easy to read and hard to put down ― Independent
Book Description
From the Back Cover
Seventeen-year-old Samuel Sooleyman comes from a village in South Sudan, a war-torn country where one third of the population is a refugee. His great love is basketball: his prodigious leap and lightning speed make him an exceptional player. And it may also bring him his big chance: he has been noticed by a coach taking a youth team to the United States.
ONE HOPE
If he gets through the tournament, Samuel's life will change beyond recognition. But it's the longest of long shots. His talent is r
About the Author
Beginning with The Firm in 1991, John Grisham has published at least one #1 bestseller every year. His books have been translated into 45 languages and have sold over 350 million copies worldwide. Ten have been adapted to film, including The Firm, The Pelican Brief, and A Time To Kill. His Theodore Boone series for young readers is now in development at Netflix. An avid sports fan, he has written two novels about football, one about baseball, and in 2021 he published Sooley, a story set in the world of college basketball. His lone work of non-fiction, The Innocent Man, was adapted into a six-part Netflix docuseries.
He is the two-time winner of the Harper Lee Prize For Legal Fiction and was distinguished with the Library of Congress Creative Achievement Award For Fiction.
When he's not writing, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Innocence Project and Centurion Ministries, two national organizations dedicated to exonerating those who have been wrongfully convicted. Much of his recent fiction explores deep-seated problems in our criminal justice systems.
A graduate of Mississippi State University and Ole Miss Law School, he lives on a farm in central Virginia, around the corner from the youth baseball complex he built in 1996. He still serves as its Commissioner.
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Product details
- Publisher : Hodder Paperbacks; 1st edition (6 Jan. 2022)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 368 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1529368049
- ISBN-13 : 978-1529368048
- Dimensions : 12.8 x 3 x 19.6 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 1,682 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 2 in Basketball (Books)
- 41 in General Sports, Hobbies & Games
- 68 in Political Thrillers (Books)
- Customer reviews:
About the author

Long before his name became synonymous with the modern legal thriller, he was working 60-70 hours a week at a small Southaven, Mississippi, law practice, squeezing in time before going to the office and during courtroom recesses to work on his hobby—writing his first novel.
Born on February 8, 1955 in Jonesboro, Arkansas, to a construction worker and a homemaker, John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. Realizing he didn’t have the right stuff for a pro career, he shifted gears and majored in accounting at Mississippi State University. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade in Southaven, specializing in criminal defense and personal injury litigation. In 1983, he was elected to the state House of Representatives and served until 1990.
One day at the DeSoto County courthouse, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel exploring what would have happened if the girl’s father had murdered her assailants. Getting up at 5 a.m. every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading off to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987. Initially rejected by many publishers, it was eventually bought by Wynwood Press, who gave it a modest 5,000 copy printing and published it in June 1988.
That might have put an end to Grisham’s hobby. However, he had already begun his next book, and it would quickly turn that hobby into a new full-time career—and spark one of publishing’s greatest success stories. The day after Grisham completed A Time to Kill, he began work on another novel, the story of a hotshot young attorney lured to an apparently perfect law firm that was not what it appeared. When he sold the film rights to The Firm to Paramount Pictures for $600,000, Grisham suddenly became a hot property among publishers, and book rights were bought by Doubleday. Spending 47 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list, The Firm became the bestselling novel of 1991.
The successes of The Pelican Brief, which hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list, and The Client, which debuted at number one, confirmed Grisham’s reputation as the master of the legal thriller. Grisham’s success even renewed interest in A Time to Kill, which was republished in hardcover by Doubleday and then in paperback by Dell. This time around, it was a bestseller.
Since first publishing A Time to Kill in 1988, Grisham has written at least one book a year (his other works are The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, The Chamber, The Rainmaker, The Runaway Jury, The Partner, The Street Lawyer, The Testament, The Brethren, A Painted House, Skipping Christmas, The Summons, The King of Torts, Bleachers, The Last Juror, The Broker, Playing for Pizza, The Appeal, The Associate, The Confession, The Litigators, Calico Joe, The Racketeer, Sycamore Row, Gray Mountain, Rogue Lawyer, The Whistler, Camino Island, The Rooster Bar, The Reckoning, and The Guardians) and all of them have become international bestsellers. There are currently more than 350 million John Grisham books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 45 languages. Nine of his novels have been turned into films (The Firm, The Pelican Brief, The Client, A Time to Kill, The Rainmaker, The Chamber, A Painted House, The Runaway Jury, and Skipping Christmas), as was an original screenplay, The Gingerbread Man. The Innocent Man (October 2006) marked his first foray into non-fiction, and Ford County (November 2009) was his first short story collection. In addition, Grisham has written seven novels for young adults, all in the Theodore Boone series: Kid Lawyer, The Abduction, The Accused, The Activist, The Fugitive, The Scandal, and The Accomplice.
Grisham took time off from writing for several months in 1996 to return, after a five-year hiatus, to the courtroom. He was honoring a commitment made before he had retired from the law to become a full-time writer: representing the family of a railroad brakeman killed when he was pinned between two cars. Preparing his case with the same passion and dedication as his books’ protagonists, Grisham successfully argued his clients’ case, earning them a jury award of $683,500—the biggest verdict of his career.
When he’s not writing, Grisham devotes time to charitable causes, including most recently his Rebuild The Coast Fund, which raised 8.8 million dollars for Gulf Coast relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. He also keeps up with his greatest passion: baseball. The man who dreamed of being a professional baseball player now serves as the local Little League commissioner. The six ballfields he built on his property have played host to over 350 kids on 26 Little League teams.
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Now, with 'Sooley' ,John Grisham appears to have written the second most tedious book he has ever produced. A totally incomprehensible novel,(to non-basketball fans, at least) taken up with detailed narrative about the basketball matches that the eponymous central character plays in.
As a long-time John Grisham fan, I found this book extremely disappointing, and not of the usual standard that we have come to expect from this author. Unusually for me, seventy-three pages in, I found the book so mind-numbingly boring, I threw it in the bin. Stick to courtroom thrillers in future, Mr Grisham!!!!!!!!!!
I buy Grisham for fantastic thrillers about people and the law. I'm guessing that he's either climbed onboard the woke bandwagon or decided that's where the money lies. If he wants to write this type of novel he could at least use a pseudonym - or make it very clear that he has abandoned the genre that made his name.
Unless you're a hard core basketball fan with a desire to understand the implications of a vicious ethnic conflict DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK.
This one does not really do that.
The issue really is with the basketball narratives which there are a lot of and are an important part of the story.
If you do not understand basketball a lot of this will be COMPLETELY unintelligible. I coached basketball and played for years and I found some of the basketball language tricky and at times a bit childish even. It seemed he gave the basketball story to a teenager to write. Some effort to dumb down the tactical talk would have made sense. How it got past an editor baffles me.
The story outside the basketball games is decent bar what I thought was a clumsy twist in the tale and yes I read it to the end but overall very very disappointing.