The Matters of Life, Death, and More
Writing on Football
Published on 17. June 2014
96 pages
978-1-4472-8298-3 (ISBN)
Description
For Aleksandar Hemon, football is more than a sport. It certainly is not 'exercise'. It is the beautiful game - and never more so than in The Matters of Life, Death, and More. From the celebrated author of The World and All That It Holds.
In this volume, Hemon revists memories of his first World Cup in 1974, for which his homeland - Yugoslavia - qualified in dramatic fashion. He takes us through the World Cups of the eighties, nineties and noughties, up to the brink of 2014: the first time Bosnia and Herzegovina had qualified in the country's history.
Here too are stories of heated games played in childhood, as Hemon recounts his youth on Sarajevo's gravel courtyards, the frozen pick-up games of his adulthood in Chicago, and the (slightly less intense) soccer practices of his daughter, replete with cones and shin guards.
As Hemon notes, 'an average life seldom contains more than twenty World Cups - our games are tragically numbered'. In The Matters of Life, Death, and More, he pays due attention to the joy, skill, agony, triumph and the beauty of everything that football is. And football is, of course, everything.
In this volume, Hemon revists memories of his first World Cup in 1974, for which his homeland - Yugoslavia - qualified in dramatic fashion. He takes us through the World Cups of the eighties, nineties and noughties, up to the brink of 2014: the first time Bosnia and Herzegovina had qualified in the country's history.
Here too are stories of heated games played in childhood, as Hemon recounts his youth on Sarajevo's gravel courtyards, the frozen pick-up games of his adulthood in Chicago, and the (slightly less intense) soccer practices of his daughter, replete with cones and shin guards.
As Hemon notes, 'an average life seldom contains more than twenty World Cups - our games are tragically numbered'. In The Matters of Life, Death, and More, he pays due attention to the joy, skill, agony, triumph and the beauty of everything that football is. And football is, of course, everything.
More details
Edition
Digital original
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Pan Macmillan
Target group
Interest Age: From 18 years
Edition type
Digital original
File size
2,53 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-4472-8298-3 (9781447282983)
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Schweitzer Classification
Person
Aleksandar Hemon is the author of The Making of Zombie Wars; The Book of My Lives, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; The Lazarus Project, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times bestseller; The World and All That It Holds; and three books of short stories, including Nowhere Man, which was also a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He was the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a 'Genius' grant from the MacArthur Foundation.
