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Marc Perelman pulls no punches in this succinct and searing broadside, assailing the ‘recent form of barbarism’ that is the global sporting event. Forget the Olympics and consider, under Perelman’s guidance, the ledger of inequities maintained by such supposedly harmless games.
They have provided a smokescreen for the forcible removal of ‘undesirables’; aided governments in the pursuit of racist agendas; affirmed the hypocrisy of drug-testing in an industry where doping is more an imperative than an aberration; and developed the pornographic hybrid that Perelman dubs ‘sporn’, a further twist in our corrupt obsession with the body.
Drawing examples from the modern history of the international sporting event, Perelman argues that today’s colosseums, upheld as examples of ‘health’, have become the steamroller for a decadent age fixated on competition, fame and elitism.
Marc Perelman
Marc Perelman trained as an architect. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Universities. His twenty-five books, written alone or in collaboration, include: Le football, une peste �motionnelle (with Jean-Marie Brohm) ; L'�re des stades ; L'Esth�tique du livre (with Alain Milon).
John Howe
Translated by
John Howe was born in 1957 in Vancouver, Canada. After finishing High School, he moved to France in 1976, where he attended the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Strasbourg, gaining a Diploma in Illustration. Aside from illustrating jackets for numerous Tolkien and other fantasy works he has also illustrated many children’s books. He lives in Switzerland with his wife and their ten-year-old son.
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