Football in Sun and Shadow

Description

An emotional history of football from one of Latin America's most distinguished writers 'Football is a pleasure that hurts' This unashamedly emotional history of football is a homage to the romance and drama, spectacle and passion of a 'great pagan mass'. Through stories of superstition, heartbreak, tragedy, luck, heroes and villains, those who lived for football and those who died for it, Eduardo Galeano celebrates the glory of a game that - however much the rich and powerful try to control it - still retains its magic.

Eduardo Galeano was a Uruguayan journalist, novelist and writer, widely held to be one of Latin America's most distinguished and admired literary figures. Born in Montevideo in 1940 to a modest middle-class Catholic family, Galeano published his first work - a political cartoon - in El Sol newspaper aged just fifteen. He went on to work for various weekly newspapers and magazines, and in 1971 he published his first book, the bestselling Open Veins of Latin America. Following his brief imprisonment during the Uruguayan military coup of 1973, Galeano fled the country- he lived in exile in Argentina and Spain for years before returning to Uruguay. His work - including the celebrated Memory of Fire trilogy - has been translated into twenty-eight languages, and during his liftetime Galeano's achievements as a writer were recognised with many literary prizes, including the hugely prestigious Casa de las Americas award. He died in 2015.

Galeano can run rings round our glamorous football intelligentsia. * When Saturday Comes * Stands out like Pele on a field of second-stringers. * New Yorker * Galeano has a style of a great left half. He constantly switches the direction of play. His observations are acute. He delivers with an air of insouciance which cannot mask his mastery * Herald * Uplifting, reckless, ironic, impassioned... sparkles with supple imagery and a fine dry wit. * Independent * Deeply humane . . . he has produced literature that will endure, monuments to the imagination -- Toby Green * Independent *