Book description
Within the severe and depressed slums of Drumsagart, rife with unemployment and discontent, the members of Thistle cling to their game as an escape. And when they actually start winning, a momentum grows up in the community around them, as they come to represent ambition and hope. The Holy Grail…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Thistle and the Grail as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This novel gets to the heart of football’s importance to communities, in this case a small Scottish industrial town beset by poverty and unemployment in the 1950s.
In this comic novel Jenkins writes simply but evocatively about football, about its emotion, and its beauty.
But perhaps more importantly, his writing focuses on the town’s people and their relationships, with each other and with the town’s Junior football team as they dream of winning the Scottish Junior Cup.
While it would be unwise to overly romanticize how football was in the past, at the same time looking back does make you…
From Stephen's list on The best books to make sense of football as a game, as business, and as community.
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