The GoalKeeper - I Learned to Stay

★★★★★ "A direct, powerful read that tackles complex subjects head-on."

★★★★★ "A devastatingly honest masterpiece."

Asaf Anonimi grew up in Israel in the 1970s. On the concrete yard at recess he was the goalkeeper, the one who could read a kick before it was struck and throw himself at the corner without a second thought. That was who he was.

Then, in third grade, another child entered his world. What began as a game on his bedroom floor became something a child should never know, in the dark corners of the schoolyard after everyone else had gone home. Asaf carried it alone for forty-six years.

The adults saw. A bruised child, torn hair in his palm, screams that tore through the night. The deputy principal said she would handle it, and never spoke of it again. The system, the teachers, the empty yard, saw and did not see. And the boy who had stood between the goalposts learned to stand alone, between goalposts no one had chosen for him.

The Goalkeeper is the testimony of that child, and of the man who, forty-six years later, walked back onto the field, not to win but to be there, for others. It asks a question that does not let go. How did every adult see the trampled child, and not one of them ask what had happened?

For readers of Educated and The Glass Castle.

About the author. Asaf Anonimi is a pen name, chosen to protect, not to hide. He is a 56-year-old educator, father, and partner in Israel, where for the past eleven years he has volunteered as a socioeconomic advisor and a support worker for the elderly, among them Holocaust survivors and people with disabilities. A survivor of childhood trauma, he carried his story alone for forty-six years before setting it down. The Goalkeeper is his second book, after Like a Tree Planted (כעץ שתול), titled for a verse from the Book of Psalms. Written in Hebrew and translated into English.

By the author of Let's Play Pretend.