Papers in the Wind Paperback - 2014

Excerpt

When Mono finished high school he had his future crystal clear. The next year they would offer him a professional contract to play for Vélez. In three or four seasons he would become the best number four in Argentina. At twenty-three—twenty-four, at the most—he would be traded for millions to an Italian team. Then he’d play about twelve seasons in Europe. Finally, he’d return to his country to finish his career with Independiente and retire on a high note. But the verbs Mono was conjugating in a self-assured conditional tense didn’t stop there.
 
Once he retired, and in order to continue his association with the world of soccer, he would become a coach. He’d start running a minor-league club and after a few seasons of experience he’d make the t some point, before or after, as a player or as a coach—or better yet, before and after, as a player and as a coach—he would take Argentina to another world title, after defeating England or Germany in the semifinals and Brazil in the final game.
 
He had dreamed of it so many times, and he had talked about it so many times—because Mono was convinced that you shouldn’t keep your great joys quiet, not the ones in the past tense and not the  impending ones—that his friends could repeat his future biography to the smallest detail. Fernando and Mauricio both saw it as a waste of their time, but Ruso would get really excited about it, taking on the roles of agent, masseur, assistant coach, or image consultant, de-pending on his mood.
 
Sadly for both of them, when Mono turned twenty he was called in to see the secretary of Vélez Sarsfield, and they notified him of the only verb in conditional tense he wasn’t prepared for: he would be released, because the club had decided they had no need for his services.

Media reviews

"Eduardo Sacheri is part magpie, part magician, patiently assembling bits of ordinary life and conversation until you feel nestled inside not only the Argentinian soccer world, but inside the four-way friendship at the center of the book. Papers in the Wind is a soccer novel that's not really about soccer, a beautifully written and translated novel that's not only about beautiful writing or translation. It starts with death and ends with the promise of life." —Brigid Pasulka, author of The Sun and Other Stars and A Long, Long Time Ago, winner of the 2010 PEN/Hemingway Award 

“A touching and amusing look at friendship through the eyes of four Argentine soccer fans…the clever ending... makes the tale worth the telling. Overall, the book is a pleasure to read.” —Kirkus

“An entertaining and affecting novel of friendship, faith, and sport.” –Booklist 

“When Papers in the Wind by Eduardo Sacheri, a novel about soccer translated from Spanish by Mara Faye Lethem, arrived on my desk, it pushed everything else out of the way.” —Shelf Awareness

"A good read if you want to lose yourself in another culture and learn more about the quirks of Argentine soccer and the impact it has on those who enjoy it." —World Soccer Talk

“A fine and inspiring novel, and you don’t have to be a soccer fan to enjoy it. But it helps!” —Hudson Valley News

“A striking novel of loss, betrayal, and what it means to grow up and accept the responsibilities that life has a way of unexpectedly thrusting upon us, Argentinian author Eduardo Sacheri’s Papers in the Wind realistically captures the bitter lows and the extreme highs of male friendship as it explores the lives of three very different men who, like it or not, will be forever linked to one another by their childhood memories and shared heartache." —Typographical Era

"Papers in the Wind, like The Secret In Their Eyes before it, is an extraordinarily well-crafted novel.  Disarmingly entertaining; wonderfully nuanced – it’s clever without showing off. Like a great soccer player, Eduardo Sacheri manages to make what he does on the field appear easy for the fans." —Book Sexy Review

“Sacheri succeeds like few others in giving his stories a universal dimension—the stories of ordinary people where the commonplace becomes epic.” —Juan José Campanella, Oscar-winning director of The Secret in Their Eyes
 
“With his stories of soccer and descriptions of its players and fans, Sacheri reconfirms his previous literary merits: the ability to create environments with great sensitivity and narration, giving his words just the right tone, and suggesting that something is left unsaid.” —Revista Acción