"
Mario Prata celebrates sixty years of his career in a fun novel about the origin myth of Brazil's most beloved sport.
What do you know about the origins of football? Invented by the English, what links it to the Chinese and Florentines? How is the goal size calculated, who had the brilliant idea of using the ball, how were the fundamental rules of the world's most popular sport created? And after all, what does the marijuana room—which actually exists in Buckingham Palace!—have to do with this story?
To tell it, exchanging passes between the real and the imaginary, mixing historical and fictional characters in improbable tables, Mario Prata transports us to the University of Cambridge, in England in 1859, using as narrator a certain John H. Watson — still just a Physical Education teacher, but who years later would become known worldwide as the future partner of Sherlock Holmes.
Revealing details about the early days of football that even the British don't know, and infusing them with a privileged sense of humor, *The Cow Dribble* combines free imagination and in-depth research, inspiration and perspiration. The result is a stunning goal that entertains and surprises everyone.
"The book is brilliant. It only has one flaw: I didn't write it!" – Jô Soares
"The book is a bargain, a delight! It's appealing in so many ways. Sarah, the female protagonist, steals the show, and she's not the highlight." – Pedro Bial
"Spectacular! The research work is incredible! And the part where the author travels through the fiction is wonderful." – Reginaldo Leme
"It's impossible to leave this book indifferent, if not stunned: a literary rout the likes of which hasn't been seen on the world's football pitches for a long time." - Juca Kfouri
"I loved it. Delicious writing, refined humor, good insights into character names, historical figures... The book is very good!" – Milton Leite
"The idea of turning Watson, Wake, and others into characters is fantastic. The way he chose to narrate the birth of the sport is charming, witty, with brilliant insights like the one about the doula. I loved how the author weaves the story together to share his motivation for telling it." – Giovana Madalosso
“Mario Prata scores his best goal ever!” – Fernando Morais
"
