KICK-OFF: STORIES FROM THE FIELD

A young footballer struggles to make his mark even as he fights, the ruthless exploitation of local football clubs, his family's strained financial circumstances and the humiliation of being the son of a man accused of deliberately throwing a winning goal in a long-ago match. A veteran player with an eclectic record prepares to play the final game of his career. A former star footballer battling grave illness relives the days of exhilarating wins and frustrating rivalries that sustain his spirit. And, on a turf slightly removed from the football field, a sportsman's obsession over justice being done to a wronged fellow player leads him into penury. Featuring the acclaimed novellas Striker and Stopper, and all of Moti Nandy's football-related short stories, this collection captures the heady highs and crushing lows, the heroism - and the ignominy of sport.

Moti Nandy (1931-2010) was one of the few writers in the world to have created an entire body of fiction centered around sports. A Sahitya Akademi award winner and former sports editor at the Anandabazaar Patrika, he wrote more than twenty-five novels in Bengali for adults, and as many for children and young adults. Nearly all his novels are set in Kolkata, where he lived, and capture the struggle and success of the underdog in sports, ranging from football to cricket, tennis to swimming, athletics to boxing. Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction into English. Over thirty of his translations have been published and he has won the Crossword Translation award twice: for Sankar's Chowringhee (2007) and Anita Agnihotri's Seventeen (2011). He has also won the Muse India award for his translation of Buddhadeva Bose's When the Time Is Right (2012) and was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction prize (2009) for his translation of Chowringhee. Besides India, his translations have been published in the UK and US in English and in several European and Asian countries through further translation.