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Home and Away
  • Published: 30 October 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784702359
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $27.99

Home and Away

Writing the Beautiful Game

Formats & editions
EBook
3 Nov 2016
Paperback
30 Oct 2017
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Karl Ove Knausgaard and fellow writer Fredrik Ekelund kick around thoughts and ideas on football, life, art and politics

Selected as a Book of the Year in The Times and Evening Standard

Karl Ove Knausgaard is sitting at home in Skåne with his wife, four small children and a dog. He is watching football on TV and falls asleep in front of the set. He likes 0-0 draws, cigarettes, coffee and Argentina.

Fredrik Ekelund is away in Brazil, where he plays football on the beach and watches matches with friends. Fredrik loves games that end up 4-3 and teams that play beautiful football. He likes caipirinhas and Brazil.

In Home and Away, two writers use football and the 2014 World Cup in Brazil to reflect on life and death, art and politics, class and literature and the most important question: was this the best football championship ever?
  • Published: 30 October 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784702359
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 432
  • RRP: $27.99
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About the authors

Karl Ove Knausgaard

Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle cycle has been heralded as a masterpiece all over the world. From A Death in the Family to The End, the novels move through childhood into adulthood and, together, form an enthralling portrait of human life. Knausgaard has been awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature, the Brage Prize and the Jerusalem Prize. His work, which also includes Out of the World, A Time for Everything and the Seasons Quartet, is published in thirty-five languages.

portrait photo of Karl Ove Knausgaard

Fredrik Ekelund

Fredrik Ekelund is a Swedish novelist, playwright and translator. He won the Fackföreningsrörelsens Ivar Lo Prize in 2009 for his novel M/S Tiden, hailed as ‘the year’s best Swedish novel’ by Svenska Dagbladet. He has played as a striker in the Swedish authors’ national football team.

portrait photo of Fredrik Ekelund

Praise for Home and Away

[It is] fascinating, insightful... Engrossing.

Nick Rennison, Sunday Times

An entirely engrossing exchange of ideas, affection and memory… [A] genuinely engaging two-hander of real affection and insight.

Barney Ronay, Literary Review

For a book which, at heart, is no more than two friends chatting about football, there is a lot to like.

The Economist

Their correspondence is, at times, very personal and the reader gets the impression that the two writers are connecting on a deeper level, able to express views and thoughts that they wouldn’t share with anyone else. It is this feeling that as a reader you are being welcomed into a lively conversation about politics, life and everything in between, which makes the book so enjoyable and engrossing.

Chris Tilbury, Prospect

Knausgaard is a writer with an astonishing ability to elevate the prosaic… As a reading experience, Home and Away is diverting, indulgent and stealthily enjoyable. Just as it probably was to write.

Esquire, Book of the Year

It's fun and possibly a fruitful format for future tournaments.

Giles Smith, The Times Books of the Year

Home and Away is deeply intelligent, enjoyable and sometimes funny.

Simon Kuper, Financial Times, Book of the Year

The pair make lively correspondents.

Max Liu

It is worth having a read of this…to be reminded again of the joy of sport and how it adds colour and passion and pleasure to modern life.

Paul Rouse, Irish Examiner

[It is] elegantly written.

Morning Star, Book of the Year

Home and Away is deeply intelligent, enjoyable and sometimes funny.

Rick Broadbent, Financial Times

An interesting and unusual study of the global appeal of football

Richard Mason, When Saturday Comes

At its core, Home and Away is a story about two men doing what they can to keep a friendship afloat, even from continents away.

New Yorker

They both love football. So the letters are about football but also lots of other things. It reminds you that watching football is about lots of other things too… I really enjoyed this.

William Leith, Evening Standard