Netherland

A Dutch man living in New York after 9/11 becomes obsessed with cricket and the immigrant community around it, and the novel is structured as a series of flashbacks and present-day chapters that build toward the discovery of his friend's body in the Gowanus Canal. The tone is melancholic and elegiac rather than tense or funny, and the book is a literary character study rather than a straightforward sports story, so literary-fiction and drama fit best; the murder/death of a close friend and the aftermath of 9/11 give it a darker, more reflective edge than a straightforward sports story.