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Underspin
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Underspin

By: E Y Zhao
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Ryan Lo begins playing table tennis at age eight. His brilliant but ruthless coach sees a talent in him that might be nurtured into greatness.

Through an adolescence marked by hours of practice, matches away from home, clandestine relationships and a determination to win, Ryan ascends to the highest echelons of the game, just as he was supposed to.

But here he is now, dead before his twenty-fifth birthday, leaving grief and confusion in his wake.

Ryan Lo was meant to be great. What happened?

Underspin delves beneath the pressure that forges a champion, and the vulnerability that makes a coming of age: the crackling intensity of a match, the push and pull of first love, and the great injustices committed within our closest relationships.

'Challengers, but make it table tennis' Lit Hub, 'Most Anticipated Books of 2025'
'An eruption of a debut . . . with meticulous precision and tremendous heart' Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, author of Chain-Gang All-Stars
'A superior force to be reckoned with' Neel Mukherjee, author of The Lives of Others and Choice
'A kaleidoscopic novel . . . Zhao's prose is a marvel' Rob Franklin, author of Great Black Hope

©2026 E Y Zhao (P)2026 Penguin Audio Coming of Age Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Sports

Critic Reviews

Zhao's Underspin is an eruption of a debut. This novel displays a wondrous ability that renders both the central sport and lives that weave around it with meticulous precision and tremendous heart. The beauty of sport the spirit of desire and the sacrifice required for greatness are all captured here in this stunner. (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah)
E.Y. Zhao arrives on the literary scene like Minerva emerging from the head of Zeus: fully formed, formidable, and a superior force to be reckoned with. Who knew the world needed a table-tennis novel? Except that it is not a table tennis novel, or not just one – it is, indelibly, what the novel has always been about: the tangle of human life; error, power, damage, striving; the complicated ties that connect us in a web at once tensile, tough, and frangible. (Neel Mukherjee)
Underspin is a kaleidoscopic novel about many things: the dark center of hurt, its ripples, and the unpayable costs of ambition. Zhao’s prose is a marvel—sly, seductive, and cutthroat as a kill shot (Rob Franklin)
E. Y. Zhao’s Underspin hurtles down the line and leaves a trail of fire in its wake. An electric debut (Jenny Tingui Zhang)
An unconventional and stylish portrait of a table tennis wunderkid, Underspin explores the different forces that shape us into who we become. Zhao takes us not only into the packed competition halls and spotless training centers that define one’s career, but the intimate hotel rooms and quiet suburban kitchens that define one’s coming-of-age. Both tender and brutal, visceral and cerebral, this book will immerse you in its high-stakes world until the very last page (Alina Grabowski)
E.Y. Zhao writes with kinetic genius about the fast paced, ultracompetitive world of table tennis, and the bliss and heartbreak of chasing greatness. Underspin is as suspenseful as a championship game and as perfectly orchestrated as a winning shot. (Laura van den Berg)
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