The Olympic Village has never been explored in
literary fiction, until now...Herman arrives in a
village where Iranians share the bus with Israelis;
where Chinese gymnasts eat alongside their rivals from
Taiwan; where German and British athletes jog through
the streets together; and where Kenyans and Ethiopians
waggle their medals in unison. He is on a search for the
right sporting heroes to conceive and raise a child.
Unable to consummate his own relationships, and having
witnessed death in the Munich Olympic Village four
decades earlier, he wishes to make new life from love
between different peoples, nations, and ethnicities.
Herman encounters Lily Wei Lee, a gymnast from Chinese
Taipei. Believing she could be an ideal mother, he
searches for an appropriate athletic mate to be her
partner. He encourages her flirtation with Moses, a long
distance runner from East Africa's Great Rift Valley.
Yet Lily develops a closer relationship with Roger
Benjamin, a British sprinter. A rivalry between Roger
and Moses develops, with humorous but also eventually
shocking consequences.This is a novel about sporting
destiny and the nature of human association, the tension
between physical and spiritual love. There are
references, images, and allusions to real and historical
athletes, from all the world's Olympic Villages: from
Derek Redmond to Fu Mingxia, from Bob Beamon to Sharron
Davies, from Roger Federer to Sally Gunnell. All their
destinies become associated with Herman's fate as ''a
go-between in the love and loves of the village's
youth.'' |
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