Need for the Bike

Few sportswriters fancy themselves members of the literary avant-garde, but Frenchman Paul Fournel is the real deal. In his carefully cadenced prose poem Need for the Bike, translated by Allan Stoekl, he shares a passion for the sport matched only by his love of language. * Bicycling * Captures cycling's joy and pain with matchless wit and elegance -- Richard Williams With a poet's precision and compassion, he has got to the heart of the same compulsion I have shared, to jump on a bike, and just go cycling off ... -- Ned Boulting If you don't know Fournel, then you're missing out ... -- David Millar Nobody - not anybody - evokes the transformative joy of cycling the way Fournel does here ... magical -- Herbie Sykes If the bike has ever touched you, Fournel's prose poem to two wheels is essential reading. For initiates to the Sunday gruppetto, it is an education; for ageing rouleurs, it is a lens on everything you hold dear about the beautiful machine. -- Robert Penn A beautiful and lucid evocation of all that is best - and worst - about riding a bicycle, by a writer for whom cycling and life are simply inseparable. -- Michael Hutchinson This classic collection is as great a book as has ever been written about cycling. Fournel's witty, insightful and affectionate prose has the kind of class that mesmerises the reader, whether they be a lover of bikes or simply an admirer of thoroughbred writing. Watching this French poet and author shifting effortlessly through the gears is like watching Anquetil pedal - and thanks to this fluent translation, readers in English can finally enjoy the lightness and precision of these essays. By several bike lengths, the cycling publication of the year. -- Chris Cleave