**The author of Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude
returns with a devilishly entertaining novel about an international
backgammon hustler who thinks he's psychic. Too bad about the tumor in
his face.
**
Alexander Bruno travels the world playing high stakes backgammon and
hunting for amateur "whales" who think they can challenge him. Lately
he's had a run of bad luck, not helped by the blot that has emerged in
his field of vision, which forces him to look at the board sideways. As
the blot grows larger, his game gets worse, until, at an opulent mansion
in Berlin, he passes out in the middle of a match and receives an
alarming diagnosis.
Out of money and out of friends, he turns to the only person who can
help (and the last person he wants to see): a high-rolling former
childhood acquaintance who agrees to pay for Bruno's experimental
surgery in Berkeley. But Berkeley is the place where Bruno discovered
his psychic gift and where he vowed never to return. There, forced to
confront patchouli flashbacks and his uncertain future, he must ask
himself: Is he playing the game, or is the game playing him?