Les Conquéts Normande d'un Tennisman Veillisant

Les Conquéts Normande d'un Tennisman Veillisant

(The Norman Conquests of an Ageing Tennis Player)

The third book in the Sporting Confessions Series by Nick Owen

Narrated by Samuel James, Claire Wyatt and Helen Lloyd

Audiobook cover by Jem Butcher

Original tennis player illustrations by Paul Warren

A gloriously absurd tennis comedy of delusion, desire and one man's unstoppable sense of his own greatness.

The third in the "Confessions" series, Les Conquêtes Normandes d'un Tennisman Vieillissant (The Norman Conquests of an Ageing Tennis Player) picks up where 'The Courting Lives' left off and tracks Andy's inexorable rise to become the greatest GOAT: or 'Greatest of All Time' as they have it in contemporary tennis parlance, by challenging for the French Grand Slam at Roland Garros.

In this Franco-British odyssey, as Lord Andrew John Paul George Paul Ringo Murray of Kirkintilloch pursues his third Grand Slam title, alongside his battles on the Parisian Clay, he battles his own ghosts and delusions. The thwarted love stories continue and take on a darker tone as his fans become more fanatical. His life is dogged by a treacherous combination of ambition, delusion and unrequited love. The narrative folds *Alice Through the Looking Glass* into its structure, fusing dream logic with sports commentary. Themes of madness, language, and identity performance dominate, positioning Lord Andrew as both Don Quixote and Lear - a man undone by the stories he tells about himself.

Phoebe returns as both observer and saviour, rescuing Andy from the North Sea and taking him to a hospital in Skegness after he embarks on yet another self-destructive act, before finally releasing him on the beach at Calais.