The Rest of Our Lives

Markovits is a British-American novelist. Born in California, he grew up in London, England, Berlin, Germany, and Texas. After earning degrees from Yale University and the University of Oxford, Markovits began a career as a professional basketball player. He eventually gave up the sport and redirected his energies to developing a career in literature: “This transition from sports to literature became the backdrop for his novel Playing Days, which reflects his own experiences in the realm of professional sports and its abrupt end” (Benjamin Markovits Fan Page; About Benjamin Markovits). In addition, Markovits taught high school English and edited a culture magazine. Since becoming a career writer, he has published 12 novels, including The Syme Papers (2004), Either Side of Winter (2005), Imposture (2007), A Quiet Adjustment (2008), Playing Days (2010), Childish Loves (2011), You Don’t Have to Live Like This (2015), A Weekend in New York (2018), Christmas in Austin (2019), Home Games (2020), The Sidekick (2022), and most recently The Rest of Our Lives (2025).

Markovits often incorporates elements of his personal experience into his works of fiction. While not true works of autofiction, Markovits’s novels echo facets of his life. For example, in The Rest of Our Lives, protagonist Tom Layward mirrors many aspects of Markovits’s biography. He once studied English. He used to be a basketball player, but by middle age has abandoned the sport professionally and only dabbles in friendly games. In addition, Tom occasionally refers to oddities in American culture and makes remarks about English culture, which reflects Markovits’s cross-cultural background. Likewise, Tom’s character experiences symptoms that mimic long-COVID but turn out to be cancer, as did Markovits.

In an interview that Markovits gave to The Booker Prizes, he overtly identifies the inspirations from his own life that spurred him to write The Rest of Our Lives. The first was his desire to explore his own familial and marital experiences in narrative form: “My kids were getting older and I wanted to write something about a certain period of family life coming to an end” (“Ben Markovits interview: ‘I wanted to write about a certain period of family life coming to an end’”; The Booker Prizes). In the same interview, Markovits identified his own illness as inspiration for Tom’s:

When I started working on the novel I had symptoms nobody could diagnose and put that in the book, too—it seemed like a useful symbol of what happens to you in middle age, the gradual decline that you can’t quite understand.

Markovits soon learned that he had lymphoma, the same diagnosis he gives Tom in the novel. Overlaps between Markovits’s biography and his characters’ experiences lend authenticity and depth to his characters.

Markovits has received awards and acclaim for his works of fiction. These accolades include the 2006 Le Prince Maurice Prize, a 2009 Fellowship from Radcliffe Center for Humanities, the 2013 Granta Best of Young British Novelists award, and the 2016 James Tait Black Prize for Fiction. In addition, he was elected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2018.

Markovits now lives in England with his family, where he teaches Creative Writing at Royal Holloway, University of London. His novels are in conversation with other contemporary works of fiction like Ann Patchett’s The Dutch House, Niall Williams’s The Time of the Child, and Michael Cunningham’s Day.