Season

For 10 months of the year, two men are drawn to adjacent seats in a stadium, carrying the burdens of life and pouring all their hopes into their beloved but ailing team. Fatherless and fretful, the Young Man is trying to nurture a precarious new relationship and to find his place in the world. The Old Man, an increasingly isolated caregiver for his fading wife, knows he has little left to look forward to. Neither fan is a comfortable talker. However, in a slow-motion play of nods, silences and guarded chats, they strike up a tentative friendship across the generational gap.

Told through 38 chapters-one for each game of the Premier League campaign-Season is a lyrical, hypnotic and gently uplifting study of loneliness and modern masculinity. About much more than football, it celebrates the healing, unifying and maddening role of ritualized sport in the lives of ordinary people.

George Harrison is a writer based in Norwich. He has worked as a freelance editor and ghostwriter on an eclectic shelfful of non-fiction books. His editorial back catalogue ranges from the memoirs of a professional golfer to true-crime stories and a book about the life of a South African spy. Despite having grown up in the West Country, George is a lifelong Norwich City fan and is fortunate now to live just a short walk away from Carrow Road. George wrote Season, his debut novel, while attached to the Escalator Talent Development Program at the National Centre for Writing.