For some people, writing for Sports Illustrated would be considered a dream job. For some families, living in the South of France would be considered a dream life. In 2004, S.L. Price got to do both. After parlaying a job offer into a one-year assignment covering sports in Europe, Price moves his wife and three kids to a small hamlet in Provence, and then, on the eve of the Olympics' epic return to Athens, proceeds to span the continent trying to untangle the soul of world sports. He goes to Pakistan to understand the planet's most intense and bloody rivalry, spends time with Lance Armstrong as he fends off rumors of performance-enhancing drugs, charts the American surge in English soccer and basketball fever in Belgrade. Through Grand Slam tennis events, soccer matches and the bacchanal that is Europe's premiere ski race, Price traces all the cross-currents of passion and patriotism, the mutually suspicious and admiring attitudes between U.S. and Europe -- and then he manages to do more. For Far Afield is more than a sports travelogue. In detailing his family's adjustment to France, in teasing out what it's like to live in a Europe convulsed by terrorism, anti-Americanism and George Bush's war in Iraq, in tracing his development as a writer with detailed portraits of icons like Ted Williams and Michael Jordan, Price provides a vivid portrait of one man's growth in his craft, and one American's walk through a strange land in the strangest of times.


An extraordinary year in the life of acclaimed sportswriter S.L. Price, who determined to see the world by discovering how games are played in places other than the United States. He settled his family in France (where he rode a bike around with Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong), immersed himself in a nuclear-fueled cricket rivalry between Pakistan and India, struggled with Olympic athletes in Greece, and explored the foreign terrain of soccer madness from Manchester to Marseille. Price's great sense of humor recalls moments with American athletes abroad, and memories of times he shared with figures such as Ted Williams and Michael Jordan. All the while, he and his wife and children try to cope with a place that seems to revile Americans of any stature, sporting or otherwise. This memoir will appeal not only to sports fans but to any reader who enjoyed "A Year in Provence" or "Under the Tuscan Sun "and, certainly, to the legions of loyal fans of S.L. Price.
S.L. Price is an award-winning sportswriter whose work has appeared in The New York Times and Sports Illustrated, among many publications. He and his family now live in Washington, D.C.