The Sportswriter

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The Sportswriter
Cover to the first edition
Cover to the first edition
Author Richard Ford
Cover artist Lorraine Louie (design), Rick Lovell (illustration)
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Novel
Publisher Vintage
Publication date March 1986
Media type Print (Hardback & Paperback)
Pages 375 pp
ISBN ISBN 0394743253
Followed by Independence Day

The Sportswriter is a 1986 novel by Richard Ford. It is about a failed novelist turned sportswriter who undergoes a spiritual crisis following the death of his son. In 1995, it was followed by a sequel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day. A third installment The Lay of the Land followed in 2006.

The book is being made into a six-hour HBO miniseries.

[edit] Awards and nominations

The novel became Ford's "breakout book" and was named one of Time magazine's five best books of 1986 and a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. In 2005, Time also named it one of the 100 best novels in English from the preceding 82 years.[1]