PLAYING FOR PIZZA. (John Grisham)

Playing for Pizza is a short novel about a fallen American football star who can no longer get work in the National Football League and whose agent, as a last resort, signs a deal for him to play for the Parma Panthers, in Parma, Italy. The quarterback's move to a small city in a foreign land leads to a series of cultural misadventures. The idea for the novel grew out of time Grisham spent in Italy researching his last novel, The Broker, which was set in Bologna. I was pleasantly surprised to find real American football in Italy,acirc;euro;yen; says Grisham, acirc;euro;oelig;and as I dug deeper a novel came together. The research was tough acirc;euro; food, wine, opera, football, Italian culture acirc;euro; but someone had to do it.