Intense in the present, Rita Bullwinkels Headshotlonglisted for this year’s Booker Prize, is a spectacularly intimate novel about boxing. It comes at a time when boxing, always the epicentre of crooks and clowns, is suffering from the recent hangover of celebrity fights and crossovers with other combat sports. But Bullwinkel’s novel is not about that circus, but about the rough terrain of young amateurs and their hopes and dreams.

The novel is set at the Daughters of America Cup for women under 18, which takes place in a dilapidated, depressing gym called “Bob’s Boxing Palace” in Reno, Nevada. Headshot is essentially a summary of this knockout tournament, in which eight young girls fight in a group until one is declared the winner (in an interview with writer Lincoln Michel, the author characterizes this group as a sort of map at the beginning of a fantasy novel, which is a pretty accurate description). As we go through the fights one by one, Bullwinkel takes us into the inner fears of these girls.

Boxing naturally attracts the ambitious and neglected, and these eight girls whose lives readers briefly delve into are all deeply affected by aspirations and traumas that don’t usually concern young people of this age. In the first fight (or chapter, if you will), Artemis Victor is the third of three sisters to box, and eager to outdo her family against Andi Taylor, who had driven here alone and slept in the car. Andi, who signed up to compete by saving money as a part-time lifeguard, is deeply disturbed when a child is drowned at her place of work. Both fighters bring their chaotic lives to boxing. The game of violence, they hope, will make everything right. But the game of fighting, as it always has been, is cruel. None of the girls pursue the sweet science, and their lives after the Daughters of America Cup ends are presented like commentary bites at a fight.

In fact, HeadshotThe narrative of stays true to the frenetic, emotional and surprising narratives we see on boxing shows. There are moments of vivid honesty. Bullwinkel describes the audience at the event as “not made up of fans, but mainly of other participants in the tournament…” This is certainly the reality at events like these.

Examples like this elevate Headshot from a novel that treats boxing as a mere plot device to one that seriously considers the sport’s relationship to human existence. The novel often goes in enigmatic directions, though. In the Daughters of America Cup, for example, each fight lasts eight rounds. That’s a lot of rounds in amateur boxing, which is standardized to four two-minute rounds for women and three three-minute rounds for men. And while amateur boxing has its variants and small-town idiosyncrasies, it’s still unthinkable that competitors as young as 15 and with a year or two of training would have to fight eight full rounds, while professional boxers today start with four rounds.

Strangely enough Headshot Weight classes are only mentioned twice and never in the context of the constant anxiety and struggle that thinking about one’s own weight brings with it for boxers.

The eight girls in Headshot obviously hope to escape the chaos of their lives in the ring. Rita Bullwinkel mentions clapping games in the second half of the novel, perhaps as a contrast to boxing. “In clapping games for girls,” she says, “there are no winners. You may get scolded if you miss a beat or forget one of the lines, but there is no victory that is reserved for only one of the participants.” In boxing, there are winners and losers, even in draws. While clapping is about coordinating rhythm, in boxing, success is achieved by breaking that rhythm. The former offers the comfort of synchronization, while the latter creates discomfort through syncopation.

Headshot shows this in a fantastic way. Bullwinkel’s novel avoids any notion of permanence by focusing resolutely on the present and the now. And no matter how much the girls in Headshot desire the harmony of slapping games in their fights, having that desire in their boxing matches is misguided. Boxing only brings bruises and chaos. It’s jazz until the bell rings and the round ends.

Shahriar Shaams has written for Dhaka Tribune, The business standardAnd The Daily Star. Find him on Instagram: @shahriar.shaams.