Game of Polo with a Headless Goat: And Other Bizarre Sports Discovered Across Asia

by Emma Levine

During a seven-year journey around India, Emma Levine heard about the wonderful game of buzkashi, a kind of anarchic rugby on horseback where teams of men wrestle and race to grab a headless goat and propel it towards goal. This sparked a desire to explore Asia's unique traditional sports. A Game of Polo with a Headless Goat is Emma Levine's absorbing account of her epic adventure, which took her from camel wrestling in Turkey through bull racing in India and traditional gymnastics in Iran. Illustrated with stunning photography, this book evocatively portrays sporting ways of life rarely seen in the western world, revealing what it is about sport that makes it so universally inspiring.

312 pages, Hardcover

First published August 1, 2000

Reviews

[Babak Fakhamzadeh · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to resist a book with a title like this, although the subtitle is annoying: "and other bizarre sports discovered across Asia". Using the word "bizarre" only says something about the author, not about the individuals practicing those sports and "discovered" implies they're hard to find or virtually non-existent.

Further, "across Asia" implies a much larger subject matter than the actual area of interest, with brief mentions of central Asia and the Caucasus and with a strong focus on Turkey, Pakistan and India. Levine, too often, tries to be too funny. Really not necessary with the material she has access to, but it seems that, to a certain extent, this is also used to mask the relative superficiality of her stories, racing from event to event, from country to country.

[indy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was more than subtly shown how Asian culture was seen as something odd and not of the ordinary to the writer, and that's understandable, considering that she's a white foreigner, although I would have appreciated if she had a little more of a respectful tone when describing the traditions.