'My love of the world game and of world literature exist alongside one another. 1994 stands as a remarkable year when I both fell in love with USA ’94, watching Roberto Baggio sky the ball over the cross-bar to lose on penalties, and when I began reading novels on my own. In 1998, I watched France win while visiting family in Singapore, a true testament to adolescence, eating fried kway teow in front of the big screen, watching Frank Leboeuf and Lilian Thuram defend as though their lives depended on it, which they surely did. In that year, I remember with great fondness reading J.M. Coetzee’s Life and Times of Michael K as I began to find my way through contemporary writers who had won ‘Big Prizes’. By 2002, when South Korea and Japan hosted the World Cup, I had started making my way through the classics, from Kharms to Camus to Coleridge. And so, football and reading have always been about leisure to me.' (Introduction)
