description: "This is an extremely entertaining book - almost as funny as Bill Bryson's wonderfully eccentric travel books...As a bonus, there's lots of information here about tiny Moldova, stuck in there between Romania and Ukraine, but odds are most readers will be laughing too hard to take much of it in." David Pitt, BOOKLIST starred review "This is a hilarious, quirky book. As long as you don't allow yourself to get hung up by a few obscure British references, it may be one of the funniest books you have ever read. Highly recommended." Sandy Knowles, LIBRARY JOURNAL It all started in Balham. Tony Hawks and his friend Arthur Smith are watching the England football team play the little-known Eastern European state of Moldova on TV. For no reason other than sheer boredom, the pair argues about how good Tony is at tennis. A bet is that Tony can't beat all eleven members of the Moldovan football team at tennis. And with the loser agreeing to strip naked on Balham High Road and sing the Moldovan national anthem, it was too good to resist. Tony's attempts to persuade the football players onto the court see him being taken in by Moldovan gypsies and narrowly avoiding being kidnapped in Transnistria. It sees him smuggle his way on to the Moldovan National Team coach and witness (almost) divine intervention in the Holy Land. And, in the end, someone gets his kit off outside Woolworth on the Balham High Road.
language: English
title: Playing The Moldovans At Tennis
titlecomplete: Playing The Moldovans At Tennis
characters: Arthur Smith, Tony Hawks
genres: Autobiography, Travel, Comedy, Nonfiction, Humor, Sports, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Adventure, Biography
ratings_count: 3198
places: Tiraspol, Nazareth, Liverpool, England, Belfast, Northern Ireland, Chișinău
awards: awardedAt: 946713600000
name: Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction
publisher: Isis Large Print