All fans and supporters of any team or club will identify with every tiny experience and emotion described by Hornby – the lack of control over something we invest so much of ourselves in, the hapless resignation to a lifetime of potential pain and heartbreak, the strong sense of belonging with an institution, with an idea and thousands of strangers, the illogical superstition and the rare moments of pure, transcendental joy and euphoria when your team does something magical and breathtaking.īut equally there is much for the non-football fan to identify with. That’s where the emotional relatability comes in. At a young age, Hornby’s life became inextricably linked with that of the North London club and for a large part of his adolescence and twenties, he truly believed that the fortunes of both were connected, sometimes even hating the club for being an addiction he couldn’t quite give up. He writes about how he fell in love with football – ‘suddenly, inexplicably, uncritically, giving no thought to the pain or disruption it would bring with it’ – and how Arsenal began to dictate the ebbs and flows of the rest of his life. Hornby writes about being an Arsenal fan, about how it all started as and became a coping mechanism for his parent’s divorce and for his father to have a different means of communication with his young son. You may not have any idea about the offside rule or a back-pass but that doesn’t stop you from wanting to read further or understanding the very core of the narrative which is human emotions and their stories. But one of its best selling points (just as with the latter) is that a basic knowledge of the sport is not a necessity for a reader’s enjoyment. It’s a narrative that is highly relatable for any fan of any sport that has a life-long relationship with a team and has knowingly and willingly embraced everything that comes with it. Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby falls into the same category. Bissinger and widely consider it as one of the best books about sports that I’ve ever read. I recently finished Friday Night Lights by H.G. “While the details here are unique to me, I hope that they will strike a chord with anyone who has ever found themselves drifting off, in the middle of a working day or a film or a conversation, towards a left-foot volley into a top right-hand corner ten or fifteen or twenty-five years ago.” (Hornby, Fever Pitch) Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch was even reprinted with a new cover and included as a part of the 2005-06 Arsenal FC membership pack for the “Final Salute” to Highbury. Having sold over a million copies in the United Kingdom, it was named the William Hill Sports Book of the Year in 1992 and made into a Penguin Modern Classic in August 2012. This time around, it’s a book that needs no introduction.

In the first edition, I wrote about Franklin Foer’s How Football Explains the World.

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