Wilson Raj Perumal has been labeled the world's most prolific match-fixer in football's recent history. Born a village boy in rural Singapore in the mid-60's, Wilson climbed the heights of international match-fixing across five continents, becoming FIFA's most wanted man. Like a "guppy in the sea", Wilson starts off a small gambler, mixing with the local Singapore bookies, and witnesses the rise and fall of the old-school Asian "big fish" of match-fixing until he finds himself competing against them in a world with no set rules, where turncoats are the norm and quick money the only drive. Perumal was arrested in Finland in February 2011 and decided to collaborate with authorities, thus opening the match-fixing Pandora's box. In his book, Wilson reveals an unprecedented account of how the international match-fixing underworld has influenced the outcomes of matches at every level of football that we may well have watched unsuspectingly. Kelong Kings is the ultimate tale about gambling, football and match-fixing, told directly by the man who made it all happen. But be advised, after you read this book, you will never be able to watch a soccer match in the same way again.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TODAY SHOW BOOK CLUB PICK • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH From the New York Times bestselling author of Loving Frank comes a much-anticipated second novel, which tells the improbable love story of Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson and his tempestuous American wife, Fanny. At the age of thirty-five, Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne has left her philandering husband in San Francisco to set sail for Belgium—with her three children and nanny in tow—to study art. It is a chance for this adventurous woman to start over, to make a better life for all of them, and to pursue her own desires. Not long after her arrival, however, tragedy strikes, and Fanny and her children repair to a quiet artists’ colony in France where she can recuperate. Emerging from a deep sorrow, she meets a lively Scot, Robert Louis Stevenson, ten years her junior, who falls instantly in love with the earthy, independent, and opinionated “belle Americaine.” Fanny does not immediately take to the slender young lawyer who longs to devote his life to writing—and who would eventually pen such classics as Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In time, though, she succumbs to Stevenson’s charms, and the two begin a fierce love affair—marked by intense joy and harrowing darkness—that spans the decades and the globe. The shared life of these two strong-willed individuals unfolds into an adventure as impassioned and unpredictable as any of Stevenson’s own unforgettable tales. Praise for Under the Wide and Starry Sky “A richly imagined [novel] of love, laughter, pain and sacrifice . . . Under the Wide and Starry Sky is a dual portrait, with Louis and Fanny sharing the limelight in the best spirit of teamwork—a romantic partnership.”—USA Today “Powerful . . . flawless . . . a perfect example of what a man and a woman will do for love, and what they can accomplish when it’s meant to be.”—Fort Worth Star-Telegram “Horan’s prose is gorgeous enough to keep a reader transfixed, even if the story itself weren’t so compelling. I kept re-reading passages just to savor the exquisite wordplay. . . . Few writers are as masterful as she is at blending carefully researched history with the novelist’s art.”—The Dallas Morning News “A classic artistic bildungsroman and a retort to the genre, a novel that shows how love and marriage can simultaneously offer inspiration and encumbrance.”—The New York Times Book Review

This publication accompanies the exhibitions Personal Structures and Culture. Mind. Becoming, both part of the 55th Biennale di Venezia, 1 June - 24 November 2013, Venice, Italy.Initiated in 2002 by the Dutch artist Rene Rietmeyer, the project Personal Structures at Palazzo Bembo presents artists from six continents, a combination of established artists and others whose oeuvre is less known. What they have in common is a dedication to the concepts time, space and existence.The participating artists have their roots in diverse cultures and have very different ages. The core concepts are highlighted in very personal ways and from unusual points of view. Culture. Mind. Becoming also brings together a variety of Chinese artists.At Palazzo Mora numerous well-known artists are presented under the theme Re-discover and a selection of upcoming artists under Ingrandimento. In addition, the exhibition includes a presentation of paintings by Fang Lijun at Palazzo Marcello. The exhibition aims to show different statements of Chinese culture today.Culture. Mind. Becoming features over 80 artists including Gotthard Graubner, Helmut Lemke, Hermann Nitsch, Yoko Ono, Otto Piene, The Icelandic Love Corporation, VALIE EXPORT, Arnulf Rainer, Zhang Huan, Xu Bing, and many others.English and Chinese text.

Between June and July 2010, 64 games of football determined that Spain was the world's best team at the World Cup in South Africa. South Africans – and the world – celebrated a brilliantly hosted tournament where everything worked like clockwork and the stands were packed with vuvuzela-wielding fans. But the truth was not yet known. Behind this significant national achievement lay years of corporate skulduggery, crooked companies rigging tenders and match fixing involving the national team. As late as 2015 it was revealed that the tournament's very foundations were corrupt when evidence emerged that South Africa had encouraged FIFA to pay money to a bent official in the Caribbean to buy three votes in its favour. As Sepp Blatter's FIFA edifice crumbled, a web of transactions from New York to Trinidad and Tobago showed how money was diverted to allow South Africa's bid to host the tournament to succeed. In The Big Fix: How South Africa Stole the 2010 World Cup, Ray Hartley reveals the story of an epic national achievement and the people who undermined it in pursuit of their own interests. It is the real story of the 2010 World Cup.

Recent decades have seen a fundamental change and transformation in the commercialisation and popularisation of sports and sporting events. Corpus Approaches to the Language of Sports uses corpus resources to offer new perspectives on the language and discourse of this increasingly popular and culturally significant area of research. Bringing together a range of empirical studies from leading scholars, this book bridges the gap between quantitative corpus approaches and more qualitative, multimodal discourse methods. Covering a wide range of sports, including football, cycling and basketball, the linguistic aspects of sports language are analysed across different genres and contexts. Highlighting the importance of studying the language of sports alongside its accompanying audio-visual modes of communication, chapters draw on new digitised collections of language to fully describe and understand the complexities of communication through various channels. In doing so, Corpus Approaches to the Language of Sports not only offers exciting new insights into the language of sports but also extends the scope of corpus linguistics beyond traditional monomodal approaches to put multimodality firmly on the agenda.