Juan Villoro is Mexico’s most prolific, prize-winning
author, playwright, journalist, and screenwriter. His books have
been translated into multiple languages; he has received the
Herralde Award in Spain for his novel El testigo, the Antonin
Artaud award in France for Los culpables. His novel, Arrecife, was
recently short-listed for the Rezzori Prize in Italy. Villoro lives
in Mexico City and is a visiting lecturer at Yale and Princeton
universities.
Thomas Bunstead's translations from the Spanish include work
by Eduardo Halfon and Yuri Herrera, Aixa de la Cruz's story “True
Milk” in Best of European Fiction, and the forthcoming A Brief
History of Portable Literature by Enrique Vila-Matas (a
co-translation with Anne McLean). A guest editor of a Words Without
Borders feature on Mexico (March 2015), Thomas has also published
his own writing in the Times Literary Supplement, The Independent,
the Paris Review blog, 3ammagazine, Days of Roses, readysteadybook,
and >kill author.
“The best football writer you've never heard of…. Juan Villoro,
Mexico’s foremost man of letters, captures the beautiful game to
perfection…. Juan Villoro is one of Mexico’s foremost men of
letters. A renowned novelist, short-story writer and translator
into Spanish of authors as diverse as Graham Greene, Goethe and
Truman Capote, Villoro has shown... his Borgesian range of being as
at home with D.H. Lawrence and W.B. Yeats as he is with the
Hispanic canon. Unlike Borges, who loathed the game, Villoro is
also one of the best writers on football in the world. Early on in
this remarkable collection of essays, Villoro sets out his stall as
a writer of sport…. Villoro is as adept on the vagaries of the game
as he is in his psychoanalysis of its players. His essay on Diego
Armando Maradona — with the Tolstoyan title ‘Life, Death,
Resurrection and a Little More Besides’ — is a masterful portrait
of the game’s greatest player…. In successfully marrying his love
of literature and football, Villoro has demonstrated the first
principle of sports writing, or any good writing for that
matter.”
—Andreas Campomar, The Spectator
“God is Round is a beautifully written exploration of some of
football's biggest stars … as well as a deep dive into more
irreverent topics…. a book that's less about sport and more about
people's connection to it.”
—NBC Sports’ Men in Blazers
"In these lyrical essays about the beautiful game — the one we call
soccer and everyone else calls football — Villoro mines the
psychological and emotional depths of what the sport represents,
and what it means, and feels like, to be a fan. Many of these
pieces center on the way sports can evoke a state of childlike
wonder, blending our joy of play with our deepest associations with
our parents, our neighborhood, our city…. Strange and soulful as
the game itself, Villoro’s pieces will send many readers to
Wikipedia to check out key plays and legendary players... [The
book] captures something ineffable about what it means to love a
team and a sport. This makes Villoro’s scathing takedown of
soccer’s governing body even more poignant.”
—Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe
“Mexico’s answer to Bill Bryson, Villoro has spent his life
watching football. This collection of essays range from straighter
profiles of Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi to touching odes to
fandom. His description of Savo Milosevic holding court at the
Bernabeu for Osasuna is worth the price of the book alone.”
—FourFourTwo (four stars)
"[God Is Round is] a fascinating look at the big characters and
funny details from the world of soccer . . . A literary hero
of mine . . . [He’s in the] top three soccer writers for me .
. . [God Is Round is] an unbelievably outstanding collection
of essays about soccer . . . It’s like seeing the game with
new eyes.”
—George Quraishi, Howler
“It came as welcome news that the formidable writer and thinker
Juan Villoro would have one of his soccer texts, God Is Round,
published in the United States…. Villoro’s book is made up of, to
borrow a soccer and literary term, set pieces… in Villoro’s hands,
or, rather, at his feet, it’s often delightful.”
—Michael J. Agovino, Los Angeles Review of Books
“A lyrical exploration of the global game of soccer. In the most
prosaic sense, Villoro is a Mexican journalist and professor of
literature. But when he writes about soccer, these job titles are
insufficient. When tackling the beautiful game, the author is a
poet and a critic, a philosopher and a historian, a keen observer
and a devoted fan . . . Whether he is producing a “diatribe”
aimed at Portugal and Real Madrid narcissist Cristiano Ronaldo or a
celebration of Argentina and Barcelona’s Lionel Messi; trying to
understand the egomaniacal enigma who is Diego Maradona; or listing
his favorite players who wore No. 10 jerseys, Villoro brings some
memorable line, some delightful turn of phrase, some inescapable
image to every page. Readers will be reminded of a similar stylist,
Eduardo Galeano, whose Soccer in Sun and Shadow has always
represented the literary apogee of writing about soccer . .
. For millions around the world, soccer is not just a game,
but rather life itself and, as Villoro ably reveals, very much
worth pursuing to the final whistle.”
—Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“The most anticipated football title of 2016.... [Villoro] is the
perfect person for this title.... God Is Round is real literature,
not just another book about football. Villoro’s words are like
poetry, rich and full of meaning.... God Is Round is certainly on
par with David Goldblatt’s The Ball Is Round: A Global History of
Soccer and Eduard Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow, arguably the
finest football titles ever written. If you can only purchase one
book this year, it has to be God Is Round. Football fans and those
that enjoy great literature will be equally enthralled with this
one.”
—International Soccer Network
“If you want to talk about soccer, go talk to Juan Villoro.”
—Carlos Fuentes
“Villoro manages to bring some of that magic back into relief—to
make it strange and new again. There are countless experts who can
rattle off Luis Ronaldo’s career stats, but this won’t capture the
player’s haphazard and bizarrely successful style anywhere near as
well as Villoro’s description…. But God Is Round’s real value lies
not in its ideas but in the approach Villoro takes to soccer
writing.... By marshaling his imagination and linguistic resources,
Villoro is able to resuscitate the rich childhood fascination that
originally got us praying to the “weekend god.” This is the goal of
most expressions of fandom, but only writing as good as Villoro’s
can actually accomplish the feat.”
—Ratik Asokan, Bookforum
“Reading God Is Round will make fans of soccer and good writing
alike wonder how they appreciated either before they read Villoro’s
insightful, critical, and ultimately hopeful take on the world’s
game.... God Is Round is not only an indispensable companion to
international soccer but also a fine introduction of US readers to
an award-winning Mexican author whose talent and skill demand that
more of his work—novels, short stories, essays, and chronicles—be
translated into English.”
—Ryan Long, World Literature Today
“In trying times like these, when the anguish and uncertainty can
be almost too much to bear, Mexico turns to him, its
philosopher-fanatic, to make sense of the seemingly nonsensical....
Juan Villoro, one of Mexico’s most decorated and esteemed writers —
who also happens to be a leading soccer analyst—comes charging down
the metaphorical field to scold, explain and extract the lessons
within.”
—Randal C. Archibold, The New York Times
“[Villoro] has assumed the Octavio Paz mantle of Mexican public
wise man of letters (though with none of Paz’s solemnity, for
Villoro is as boyishly effusive, brimming with laughter and
cleverness, as Paz was paternalistically dour—and, of course,
Villoro, the author of the book God Is Round, may be the most
fútbol-obsessed man alive)”
—Francisco Goldman, The New Yorker
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