Beyond A Boundary
  • Published: 2 July 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875398
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $26.00
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Beyond A Boundary

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C L R James's infamously great 1963 cricket masterpiece - voted the third best sports book ever by the Observer - reissued in Vintage Classics for the Cricket World Cup 2019


'To say "the best cricket book ever written" is piffingly inadequate praise' Guardian

'Great claims have been made for [Beyond a Boundary] since its first appearance in 1963: that it is the greatest sports book ever written; that it brings the outsider a privileged insight into West Indian culture; that it is a severe examination of the colonial condition. All are true' Sunday Times

C L R James, one of the foremost thinkers of the twentieth century, was devoted to the game of cricket. In this classic summation of half a lifetime spent playing, watching and writing about the sport, he recounts the story of his overriding passion and tells us of the players whom he knew and loved, exploring the game's psychology and aesthetics, and the issues of class, race and politics that surround it.

Part memoir of a West Indian boyhood, part passionate celebration and defence of cricket as an art form, part indictment of colonialism, Beyond a Boundary addresses not just a sport but a whole culture and asks the question, 'What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?
  • Published: 2 July 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784875398
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 368
  • RRP: $26.00
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Cyril Lionel Robert James

C L R James, historian, novelist, cultural critic and political activist, was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1901. In 1932 he joined his friend Learie Constantine in Britain, where he became cricket correspondent of the Manchester Guardian. A central figure in the Pan-African movement and the struggle for colonial emancipation, he returned to Trinidad in 1958 in its run-up to independence. He later went back to London, where he died in 1989.

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Praise for Beyond A Boundary

Great claims have been made for [Beyond a Boundary] since its first appearance in 1963: that it is the greatest sports book ever written; that it brings the outsider a privileged insight into West Indian culture; that it is a severe examination of the colonial condition. All are true

Sunday Times

To say "the best cricket book ever written" is piffingly inadequate praise. A mental landscape triangulated by literature, socialism and cricket represents an ideal we should all aspire to, and this ennobling and beautifully written book should be read by anyone with the slightest interest in any one of the above

Guardian

Anyone who has not encountered [Beyond A Boundary] should seize the chance now

Sunday Telegraph

Years ago I had presumed, on being repeatedly told that C L R James' Beyond A Boundary was the finest sports book ever written, that it was the opposite; in fact, James' erudite tale probably warrants that label

Independent

An innovative mixture of autobiography, sports journalism and political philosophy

Daily Telegraph

One of the finest and most finished books to come out of the West Indies

V. S. Naipaul