Vova is fifteen when the Nazis invade kiev in 1941. He is only interested in playing football. But no one can stay on the sidelines in war. Vova and his sister join the partisans and do what they can to harass the enemy. But they soon realize that they are not only fighting the Germans but their own people too, the Ountsi ─ Ukrainians who have thrown in their lot with the Germans, splitting families apart to fight on different sides.

And then Vova is given the chance to play football again, against a German side. Only in this match the stakes are high: if Vova's team win, they will be shot. As Vova plays in this Match of Death he has to decide whether to disgrace his country and lose the game or win-and die.

This story is based on actual events that happened during the Nazi invasion of the Ukraine in the Second World War. For the book, the author interviewed in Kiev sons of dead footballers and eyewitnesses to the ' Match of Death '.

 

James Riordan was born in Portsmouth during the war. He had various jobs before doing his National Service in the RAF. After demobilization he gainde degrees from Birmingham, London, and Moscow, then worked as a translator in Moscow. Back in England he lectured at Portsmouth Polytechnic and Birmingham and Bradford universities and at Surrey University where he was professor of Russian Studies. He has written over twenty academic books on Russian social issues and on sport, several collections of folk-tales, and number of picture books. Sweet Clarinet was his first novel for children; it won the 1999 NASEN Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Children's Book Award. Match of Death is his fifth novel for Oxford University Press.