Papers in the Wind

“Like Hornby and Roddy Doyle, [Sacheri] excels at rendering the bantering, often adolescent exchanges of male friendship… this book is the perfect read for literate sports fans who are turned off by the excess of the World Cup, who don’t give a damn about golden boots and groups of death. Sacheri’s book is about failure and the ways that people cope with crushed dreams. It reduces the global sport to a human level, yet still acknowledges its flawed appeal.” —NewYorker.com

“A touching and amusing look at friendship through the eyes of four Argentine soccer fans…the clever ending… makes the tale worth the telling. Overall, the book is a pleasure to read.” —Kirkus

“In describing a world where players are commodities, whose value is talked up or down by a cast of reptilian speculators, Sacheri opens a fascinating window onto the game’s un-beautiful workings.” —Times Literary Supplement

“An entertaining and affecting novel of friendship, faith, and sport.” —Booklist 

“When Papers in the Wind by Eduardo Sacheri, a novel about soccer translated from Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem, arrived on my desk, it pushed everything else out of the way.” —Shelf Awareness 

“Eduardo Sacheri is part magpie, part magician, patiently assembling bits of ordinary life and conversation until you feel nestled inside not only the Argentinian soccer world, but inside the four-way friendship at the center of the book. Papers in the Wind is a soccer novel that’s not really about soccer, a beautifully written and translated novel that’s not only about beautiful writing or translation. It starts with death and ends with the promise of life.” —Brigid Pasulka, author of The Sun and Other Stars and A Long, Long Time Ago, winner of the 2010 PEN/Hemingway Award.

“A striking novel of loss, betrayal, and what it means to grow up and accept the responsibilities that life has a way of unexpectedly thrusting upon us, Argentinian author Eduardo Sacheri’s Papers in the Wind realistically captures the bitter lows and the extreme highs of male friendship as it explores the lives of three very different men who, like it or not, will be forever linked to one another by their childhood memories and shared heartache.” —Typographical Era

“A good read if you want to lose yourself in another culture and learn more about the quirks of Argentine soccer and the impact it has on those who enjoy it.” —World Soccer Talk

“Papers in the Wind, like The Secret In Their Eyes before it, is an extraordinarily well-crafted novel.  Disarmingly entertaining; wonderfully nuanced – it’s clever without showing off. Like a great soccer player, Eduardo Sacheri manages to make what he does on the field appear easy for the fans.” —Book Sexy Review

“Sacheri succeeds like few others in giving his stories a universal dimension—the stories of ordinary people where the commonplace becomes epic.” —Juan José Campanella, Oscar-winning director of The Secret in Their Eyes

“A fine and inspiring novel, and you don’t have to be a soccer fan to enjoy it. But it helps!” —Hudson Valley News

“With his stories of soccer and descriptions of its players and fans, Sacheri reconfirms his previous literary merits: the ability to create environments with great sensitivity and narration, giving his words just the right tone, and suggesting that something is left unsaid.” —Revista Acción