Beyond a Boundary

A welcome reissue of one of the greatest sports books ever written, this book transcends its genre and subject and has become a classic. C. L. R. James, one of the foremost thinkers of the 20th 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 of the players whom he knew and loved, exploring the game's psychology and aesthetics, as well as the issues of class, race, and politics that surround it. Part memoir of a West Indian boyhood, part passionate celebration and defense of cricket as an art form, and part indictment of colonialism, this book addresses not just a sport but a whole culture, asking the question What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?

In C. L. R. James's classic Beyond a Boundary, the sport is cricket and the scene is the colonial West Indies. Always eloquent and provocative, James—the "black Plato," (as coined by the London Times)—shows us how, in the rituals of performance and conflict on the field, we are watching not just prowess but politics and psychology at play. Part memoir of a boyhood in a black colony (by one of the founding fathers of African nationalism), part passionate celebration of an unusual and unexpected game, Beyond a Boundary raises, in a warm and witty voice, serious questions about race, class, politics, and the facts of colonial oppression. Originally published in England in 1963 and in the United States twenty years later (Pantheon, 1983), this second American edition brings back into print this prophetic statement on race and sport in society.

C. L. R. James (1901–1989), historian, novelist, cultural and political critic and activist, was born in Trinidad. He is the author of numerous books, including his well-known study of the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins (1938).