First e-book edition of Soccer in Sun and Shadow published by Byliner
“Is there any book more evocative of ‘the beautiful game’ than Eduardo Galeano’s slim but buoyant paean to the players, goals, joys, and heartbreaks of a lifetime of soccer fandom?” —Vanity Fair
“It’s all here. Everything you should know about soccer, the world’s game.”
Los Angeles Times
Soccer in Sun and Shadows ,which retails at $9.99, is one of the greatest sports books written in our times, and we have the internationally celebrated journalist and author Eduardo Galeano to thank for it. Mark Fried has translated it into English, and it is now available as an e-book for the first time.
Packed full of charm and wit and carrying the kind of insight only a true fan could relay, The New Yorker has said that it “stands out like Pele on a field of second stringer”. It has also been named one of the all time top 100 sports books by Sports Illustrated.
Originally appearing in Spanish in 1995, now revised and thoroughly updated, Soccer in Sun and Shadow traces the sport from its roots in China to the Brazilian slums where the dance form capoeira reshaped it into a soccer “made of hip feints, undulations of the torso, and legs in flight,” and finally through the great moments of a century’s worth of competition in all corners of the globe.
These stories come addictively fast and furious, vignettes with the searing impact of great photographs. And as would be expected of one of our most accomplished historians, Galeano sets every one of them against a greater context: the wars being waged, the cultural shifts transforming societies, and what inflames him the most: the inexorable influences of money, sponsorship, television, and any form of cold, hard calculation that aims to place winning for its own sake above the beauty and glory of the game.
“[I am] a beggar for good soccer,” writes Galeano, who grew up in Uruguay hoping to become a professional soccer player. “I go about the world, hand outstretched, and in the stadiums I plead: ‘A pretty move, for the love of God.’ ” The past century’s great players, from Di Stéfano to Cruyff to Maradona, reward him with such moves, and we are all the richer for it. At times hilarious, at others heartbreaking, one thing it never lacks is humanity. Soccer in Sun and Shadow is a fan’s book, and it’s much more. Featuring artwork designed by the author, it has been called by theSan Francisco Chronicle “a loving tribute to the game and its culture, and a celebration not only of soccer but also of life.”