Selected as a Guardian best book of 2016 A funny and mind-bending novel about the clash of empires and ideas in the sixteenth century, told over the course of one dazzling tennis match A brutal tennis match in Rome. Two formidable opponents: the wild Italian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio and the loutish Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo. Galileo, Saint Matthew and Mary Magdalene heckle from the sidelines. In England, Thomas Cromwell and Henry VIII execute Anne Boleyn, and her executioner transforms her legendary locks into the most sought-after tennis balls of the time. Across the ocean in Mexico, the last Aztec emperors play their own games, as Hernan Cortes and his Mayan translator and lover scheme and conquer, fight and fuck, not knowing that their domestic comedy will change the course of history. Over the course of one dazzling tennis match - through assassinations and executions, carnal liaisons and papal dramas, artistic and religious revolutions, love and war - Sudden Death tells the grand adventure of the clash of empires and the dawn of the modern era.