Izzy Abrahami - This satiric fable about a fad that captures the nation begins one evening in a housing development, when an idle man happens to notice that the hundreds of windows he can see from his balcony form patterns of light and darkness

 

Izzy Abrahami, The Game, Tough Poets Press,

2021 [1973]

This satiric fable about a fad that captures the nation begins one evening in a housing development, when an idle man happens to notice that the hundreds of windows he can see from his balcony form patterns of light and darkness. To escape boredom he creates a game, investing the patterns with meaning. Soon he and his wife become happily engrossed in his invention. They refine the game by observing what's going on inside the apartments behind the windows and creating a scoring system based on what they see.

From this simple beginning, Izzy Abrahami spins off an extraordinarily funny and wise novel, caricaturing modern society. His two voyeurs are discovered by their neighbors, who panic over the fact that they're being watched... until they themselves discover what it is that the voyeurs are doing. Then they too become fascinated with the game; their fascination is echoed by the rest of the country, and the game spreads like wildfire.

"Once you pick it up, you can't stop reading it. . . . There's nothing like it in our experience and yet you like it at once."— Walter James Miller, Reader's Almanac, WNYC

"I have read this novel with pleasure and admiration. It is beautifully contrived, ingenious, economical, thoroughly convincing. It is also witty and civilised, and . . . must earn a kind of astonished applause."— Anthony Burgess

"Izzy Abrahami is a natural storyteller. The Game is delicious satire: droll, rather sneaky, always intelligent. It is a fine first novel. It is also what it beholds, a game, and as such is great fun."— Israel Horovitz