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John Banville’s New Novel Is a Universe for His Past Creations

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John Banville’s New Novel Is a Universe for His Past Creations

THE SINGULARITIES, by John Banville


The Irish novelist John Banville writes prose of such luscious magnificence that it’s all too simple to view his work as an aesthetic venture, an train in pleasure giving. This impression was little doubt bolstered by his Booker Prize-winning novel “The Sea” (2005), which is uncharacteristic in its simplicity and openness. However what drives Banville — and his relentless hunt for the best adjective and simile and cadence — is a want to the touch one thing elusive and never fairly nameable whereas offering a parallel or overlapping commentary on that doomed however by no means pointless effort.

Though he’s usually in comparison with Nabokov, with explicit reference to his arch and swaggering narrators, and an emphasis on doubles, Banville’s most necessary money owed are to literary-minded German thinkers (Nietzsche, Heidegger), philosophically inclined German writers (Kleist, Rilke, Hugo von Hofmannsthal) and others in that line of descent, notably Beckett and Wallace Stevens, from whom Banville borrowed an epigraph as way back as 1976, for “Physician Copernicus,” and a title, “The Blue Guitar,” as not too long ago as 2015.

“The Singularities,” Banville’s exhilarating new novel, gives itself fairly overtly as a rumination on, or rummage round, concepts about illustration. Like a lot of his finest work, it goals to each scrutinize and confront one of many central challenges of the human endeavor: the way to create an correct portrait of issues. It has two, very completely different, know-it-all narrators. One is a god or “godlet,” a never-identified son of Zeus, who has entry to human thought and takes the reins for 10 of the 17 chapters. The opposite is the educational Jaybey (a homophone for his creator’s initials), who’s writing a biography of the late mathematician Adam Godley and has been invited to look at his papers on the Godleys’ property in County Wexford, Eire.

In Banville’s model of historical past, Godley’s Brahma concept proved the existence of infinite universes and instantly produced an interference impact on the planet. Just like the blue guitar in Stevens’s poem, which adjustments “issues as they’re,” the invention doesn’t solely mirror actuality however has a direct affect on it. New York, for instance, is known as New Amsterdam once more. Chilly fusion is feasible, so automotive engines and different machines run on salt water. What confuses issues, for the characters and infrequently the reader, is that the overhaul has not been complete. The not too long ago launched convict Freddie Montgomery, who confessed to a homicide in Banville’s 1989 novel “The Ebook of Proof,” turns up at his childhood dwelling, solely to search out that it’s now (and maybe at all times has been) the Godley residence. However Montgomery’s standing as a villain in Irish society hasn’t modified, and he’s compelled to undertake a pseudonym, Felix Mordaunt.

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Q&A: Rose Zhang on her TGL investment, the LPGA’s future and slow play

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Q&A: Rose Zhang on her TGL investment, the LPGA’s future and slow play

There are a lot of things to admire about Rose Zhang. Before turning pro two years ago, she was arguably the winningest amateur in the history of women’s golf. Now she’s competing on the LPGA and already has a pair of professional wins at age 21. Zhang is as poised as they get and her youth — combined with a swing that could make a robot look inconsistent — has allowed her to become one of the faces of the game’s Gen-Z movement.

Zhang is doing it all while attending Stanford University as a communications major, taking 22 credits this winter (she completes one 10-week quarter each year to balance school with the international LPGA schedule). As Zhang finishes her third-to-last quarter of classes en route to a 2027 graduation date, she caught up with The Athletic to talk about the state of the LPGA, her adjusted preseason game plan and her new foray into golf’s simulator experiment. Zhang is now a minority investor in The Bay Golf Club, TGL’s San Francisco team. According to TGL, active discussions are taking place with the LPGA to devise competitions that could integrate top female players. With virtual holes, players in a mixed event could all hit from the same tee boxes with the technology adjusting for appropriate distances. The prospect of that arrangement is certainly enticing, and Zhang, for one, is intrigued by it.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

You’re the newest investor in TGL. How did that come about?

I’d heard about it on social media, but I never really thought about becoming an investor. My agency brought the opportunity to me. It’s low stakes for me because I’m not the one playing out there. It’s cool to be on the investing side of things, this is one of the first things I’ve invested in, in the golf world at least. The Bay Area has played a huge role in my life and career. I’m a student-athlete at Stanford, I play a lot of golf in the city of SF and being able to be a part of it in a more meaningful way was my first thought. To see other athletes like Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala involved makes it even more amazing. It’s going to be cool to watch the team on TV and say, “Oh, I have a little part in that!” Not really … but I do. I’m invested in it emotionally too.

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Have you watched much TGL?

I have, with the cool technology and the indoor facility it gives an energy that even non-golfers can enjoy. I think it’s a really good platform to expose different parts of the game, show people’s personalities, and have a little bit of fun. Some of my non-golf friends are like, “Oh, this thing is like a whole stadium and you’re playing golf indoors? What does that even mean?” You’ve got all these crazy lights — it basically turns into a show. It’s a good source of entertainment for those who aren’t exposed to it. You don’t get to see golfers’ personalities because we don’t talk. The entertaining side of all of this is that players are mic’d up and get to interact with fans and each other. People like to see competition and camaraderie but some kind of flare to each personality.

Should LPGA players be a part of TGL?

I think that’s a topic for discussion. That would definitely be very interesting. It brings a lot of variety with the format that it is — indoor golf, one vs. one or team vs. team. Having diversity really brings this sort of platform to life. I can definitely see the LPGA hopping on board with it, having specific players participate in a TGL event. I played “The Match” with Rory McIlroy, Lexi Thompson and Max Homa. It’s similar to that, but it’s inside and indoors so it’s fair play for everyone. I think a lot of people don’t understand, there are a lot of characters out there on the LPGA Tour. You’ve got a lot of people with personalities that are so suited for this type of format.

Who should TGL recruit from the LPGA?

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We’re talking about popular characters here. To start off, in my opinion, I’d love to see Meghan Khang hop on there. She knows how to talk, that’s for sure. Charley Hull is a world renowned name, it’d be really entertaining to see what she does. If you want really good players, you’ve got Lydia Ko, you’ve got Nelly Korda.


A highlight of Zhang’s 2024 was her appearance on a winning Solheim Cup team. (Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)

You made your season debut at the HGV Tournament of Champions and posted at T10 finish, but we know that was just a break from your winter studies at Stanford. How has your offseason been treating you?

It’s been a lot more academic than actual golf. I’m excited, I’m doing a lot of cool projects. I’m hosting an AJGA event. I’ve been focusing on school, hanging out with friends, and being with people I haven’t been able to hang out with in the last two years. It’s really nice to have some bonding time and just enjoy the offseason a little bit more. It’s a grind, given I’m still balancing academics and golf. But the grind honestly challenges me.

What classes are you taking this semester?

I’m taking a Politics of Algorithms, Deliberative Democracy and its Critics, a Hebrew Jewish Short Stories class, a Science Technology & Society class and a class called Sleep and Dreams. It’s a cognitive science class. You get bonus points if you fall asleep in lecture. You get woken up by a squirt gun.

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Did you intentionally decide to take a step back from golf and throw yourself into school this year?

Definitely. Especially with last year, I was able to balance golf and school, but my social life was deterred a little bit. I had a lot of difficulty in balancing myself and my health, physically. It was a little bit hard to navigate in that sense. This year I was a lot more intentional. I’m taking 22 units of classes. That’s a big load for any student. I essentially decided to finish my academics and prioritize that, and then when I could rest and recover that’s when I could spend time with people. Just be a little bit lower maintenance, so when I start playing at the end of March I’m not completely tired and wiped out from the last three months. It’s been a lot better. I personally wish to prepare the best way I can starting in March. With a super long season my priority is to rest a little bit more.

What have been some of those hiccups in your health?

Everything piled up on its own. I did a lot of intense practicing at school, and I had a lot of class as well. I also just went full speed into the season. I spread myself a little thin in practice and the way I was doing things. By the end of the year, I had this recurring thing with my wrist that started back in 2020, and it just came back. I don’t want it to remain chronic, so that’s a priority. I’m slowly starting to load my wrist again to make sure it’s strong. You can go to physical therapy and have the inflammation resolved, but to strengthen it or at least bring it back to its normal performance, you’ve going to need to do circuits that involve resistance and weight. That’ll get me where I want to be.

Do you have any mindset changes or goals you’ve hoping to make in 2025?

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The No. 1 thing that I have in mind — and I was talking to my entire team about it — is I just want to make sure I’m intentional with the things I’ve been doing and the schedule I curate with them. I want to stay accountable for balancing everything and actually do everything, for example. Making sure I’m going through workouts with my trainer, resting my body and relaxing it, giving myself times where I can work with my coach and practice efficiently. I created a schedule for myself, and I wish to just go with that. So when things happen on tour and there’s a lot going on, I have a plan to fall back on. Last year, I misdirected in the way I was preparing myself for events. So that’s the main priority this year. I’m not so worried about the results as much. If you’re able to plan the process and go with it, that’s when results come.

Do you find comfort in sticking to a process?

I find freedom in it. Once you know you’re on a trajectory that you curated, that’s when you have a little bit more agency to at least think about if you need to deviate plans. I was doing a little bit too much of going here, going there — not fulfilling my priorities.

You started using AimPoint this fall. Has it been helping you and what has the process been like learning it?

I started using it at The Annika, actually, and that week was my best putting week on tour to date. I feel very encouraged by it. Obviously, I still have to do some practice. I do believe that it’s helped me a lot, especially with my confidence. And the slow play thing — if you do it right, it doesn’t slow other people up. As long as you’re courteous, that’s the biggest thing.

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Zhang changed her putting routine late last year, switching to the AimPoint strategy. (Julio Aguilar / Getty Images)

Speaking of slow play, the LPGA released a new slow play policy. Do you think the tour has a slow play problem?

It’s definitely been voiced by a lot of players. We take a lot of time waiting, especially on par 5s and par 3s. It slows up your day, and it slows things for those who are watching. At the end of the day, I think it’s up to players to create their routine to allow them not to be the slow player out there. There are players who struggle with that, which I understand. I’m just glad the LPGA has this regulation for everyone to follow. I’m not really a fast player, but I get paranoid about being slow. I grew up playing junior golf on the AJGA, and you get these red cards when you’re slow.

The LPGA is on the hunt for a new commissioner. What should their top priorities be?

There’s a difficult balance in the business aspect of golf and the actual competitive world of golf, so I understand how challenging it is. The biggest thing I’d wish for the new commissioner to do is at least provide communication or at least clear communication for what they intend on doing, and what you wish to relay to the players. You have to grow the LPGA through engagement, through deals, through sponsorships. This requires a lot of EQ and requires a lot of intelligence in that sense. I’d say with that, the new commissioner really needs to embody those basic things that could really elevate the LPGA. It’s not easy. They have to have the players’ best interests too, which is a fine line to tackle. That’s why I say communication is super key. If the players understand where the business mind comes from, they may want to critique things but they’d also be OK with things if they at least have a voice that can tell them what’s going on. That’s the biggest thing.

Do you think the LPGA does enough to promote its stars?

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I don’t believe so. I speak for a lot of players who also believe that. The reason is, I think it takes characters to really showcase what the tour is about — to give people a story or something to engage with. The LPGA has been trying. I don’t think that it’s not happening. They’re in the process of creating more engagement for LPGA players to be exposed to the public. There are already characters on tour who are willing to fill those shoes. It’s honestly just the strategic side of things now. Exposing them to platforms, media and other people. A lot of players are already willing to do so. You need to have both ends of the stick. The player who is willing to put themselves out there, and a tour that is willing to push you out there. There are a lot of initiatives happening behind the scenes. I’m not discouraged by them not doing anything, it’s more so they just haven’t done much yet.

(Top photo: Cliff Hawkins / Getty Images)

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Tilted Axis Press Took a Big Risk on Translated Literature. It Paid Off.

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Tilted Axis Press Took a Big Risk on Translated Literature. It Paid Off.

A few years ago, the translator Jeremy Tiang was browsing in a bookstore in Singapore when he came across an unusual book of stories.

Written in Chinese under a pen name, the book, “Delicious Hunger,” drew on the author Hai Fan’s 13 years fighting in the jungles of Malaysia and southern Thailand as a guerrilla soldier with the Malayan Communist Party.

Tiang knew it might be hard to land an English-language publisher for a story collection from a Singaporean author writing under a pseudonym. But there was one publisher, a small press in Britain called Tilted Axis, that was known for seeking out subversive, experimental works in translation. Tiang submitted a sample, and Tilted Axis snapped it up.

Tiang’s translation, released in Britain last fall, won an English PEN Translates Award, becoming the first book from Singapore to win the prize.

Publishing it in the United States proved more difficult. “Delicious Hunger” was submitted to 29 American publishers, but none made an offer.

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So Tiang was elated when he learned that Tilted Axis is expanding its footprint to North America. “Delicious Hunger” will go on sale here this June, one of nearly 20 titles from the Tilted Axis catalog coming out in the United States this year. The first batch arrives this month.

“I don’t know that the book would have found its way into translation or into the U.S. or U.K. distribution without someone like Tilted Axis to give it a platform,” said Tiang, who has translated more than 30 books from Chinese into English. “All too often it’s small, scrappy presses that take these risks, and they pay off.”

Since its founding a decade ago, Tilted Axis has gained a reputation for bringing out a wide range of groundbreaking, genre-defying literature in translation. With only eight employees working part-time on a tight budget, it has published 42 books translated from 18 languages, including Indonesian, Thai, Vietnamese, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Eastern Armenian, Kazakh, Kannada, Bengali, Uzbek and Turkish.

Publishing works from languages, regions and subcultures that have long been overlooked, they face little competition from bigger houses, which tend to gravitate toward established trends and books with a proven market (see Scandinavian noir and Japanese healing fiction). Perhaps for that reason, Tilted Axis has carved out a unique literary niche, and has caught the attention of critics and prize juries, landing major awards and winning acclaim for writers who were unknown in the Anglophone world.

“There are so many different forms of literature that people don’t even know exist because we don’t have access to them,” said Kristen Vida Alfaro, Tilted Axis’ publisher. “Every translation from different parts of the world has the potential to give you not just a different perspective, but a window into an entirely different imagination.”

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At a moment when nationalism and isolationism are rising in both Europe and the United States, the window that literature can provide into other cultures feels essential, Alfaro said.

“What we publish, and who we are and the community that we’ve created, it’s exactly what this climate is trying to eradicate,” she said.

With its emphasis on overlooked languages and narratives that often have a queer or feminist bent, Tilted Axis has helped to transform the landscape for translated fiction, which makes up just a small fraction of the work published in English, and remains heavily Eurocentric.

The number of translated titles released in the United States has hovered around just a few hundred titles a year for much of the past decade.

“Literature from Asia was generally ignored before specialist publishers like Tilted Axis,” said Anton Hur, whose translations include the Tilted Axis title “Love in the Big City,” Sang Young Park’s novel about a young gay man’s romantic escapades in Seoul.

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Translators and authors say Tilted Axis is also helping to transform the field of translation — bucking longstanding conventions around not only what gets translated, but who gets to translate, and how.

For decades, the profession was dominated by white translators who came from academic backgrounds. Tilted Axis often hires translators from the global south, many of whom grew up steeped in the language and cultures of the books they are working on. Ten of their translators published their debut translations with the press, and several more first-time translators have books under contract.

Tilted Axis put translators’ names prominently on its covers from the start, well before it became more common. It also gives them a cut of royalties and sub-licensing deals, which is still not the standard. Its small staff includes several translators who collectively speak more than a half dozen languages.

To draw more people into the field, Tilted Axis has organized translation workshops, including two programs in London last year that focused on Vietnamese and Filipino literature. It published a book on the art of translation, which explores the way colonial legacies have shaped literary translation, and features essays from 24 writers and translators. The anthology, “Violent Phenomena,” is now taught at university translation programs in the United States and Britain.

“What translations get published, who gets to translate, all these issues are still a huge problem,” said Khairani Barokka, a writer who also translates from Bahasa Indonesia into English, and who contributed to the anthology.

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The Chinese writer Yan Ge said she was surprised to find an English-language publisher for her novel, “Strange Beasts of China,” a surreal story about an amateur cryptozoologist who studies otherworldly creatures. Since its release in China in 2006, it had never drawn any offers from Western publishers.

When Tilted Axis released the translation by Jeremy Tiang in 2020, it drew admiring reviews and comparison to works by Jorge Luis Borges and Italo Calvino.

Tilted Axis embraced the novel’s weirdness, and helped her find “space where I can exist as a writer in the English language,” Yan said.

“They don’t try to shoehorn anything to fit into this imaginary English reader’s taste,” she said. “They respect how it’s done in its original language and how it relates to its own cultural values.”

The novelist and translator Thuận, who writes in Vietnamese and French and lives in Paris, had published seven translations of her books in France before any of her fiction made it into English. In 2022, Tilted Axis published her English-language debut, a translation by Nguyễn An Lý of her novel, “Chinatown,” which unfolds in a single unbroken paragraph and takes place on a stalled Metro in Paris, where a Vietnamese woman gets lost in her past.

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Thuận, who was born in Hanoi during the Vietnam War, had long wanted to see her books in English — not only to reach more readers, but to counter stereotypes about Vietnam that persist in Western literature and film.

At an event held by Tilted Axis in London last September to celebrate “Elevator in Sài Gòn,” Thuận’s latest English-language release, a mostly young crowd packed into Libreria, a small bookstore near Brick Lane, occasionally posing questions in Vietnamese.

Speaking through an interpreter, Thuận described how having her work released in English has taken her fiction in new directions, and gave her an idea for her new novel, “B-52,” she said.

“When I learned that my books would be translated and published by Tilted Axis Press in English, I immediately had the idea for a war novel for Anglophone readers,” she said. “There’s still very little written from the perspective of North Vietnamese on the topic, and I believe the Americans still don’t understand the war if they don’t understand how North Vietnamese people experienced the war.”

From the start, Tilted Axis stood out for its unconventional taste and willingness to publish quirky, boundary-pushing work.

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The press was co-founded in 2015 by the translator Deborah Smith, who made a name for herself when her translation of Han Kang’s novel, “The Vegetarian,” won the International Booker Prize. It was Smith’s first full-length translation, and the first English publication of a novel by Han, a Korean novelist who won the Nobel Prize for literature last year.

Its first books included Prabda Yoon’s surreal, postmodern short story collection “The Sad Part Was,” translated from Thai by Mui Poopoksakul, “Panty,” Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay’s erotic novel about a young woman’s sexual awakening in Kolkata, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha, and Hwang Jungeun’s fantastical novel “One Hundred Shadows,” about a rundown neighborhood in Seoul whose residents’ shadows detach from the ground and rise, translated from Korean by Jung Yewon.

Within a few years of its founding, the press caught the attention of prize committees and foreign publishers. In 2022, Tilted Axis had three of its books on the longlist for the International Booker Prize, and won with Daisy Rockwell’s translation of Geetanjali Shree’s “Tomb of Sand,” a formally daring Hindi novel about an elderly woman who won’t get out of bed.

Still, surviving as a small press has often been a struggle. To fund its translations, the press, a nonprofit, often relies on grants. The budget is so tight that its eight employees all have other jobs. Even its publisher, Alfaro, who took over when Smith left in 2022, works part-time at a publishing house specializing in art and children’s books.

Alfaro hopes the press’s fortunes will improve this year with Tilted Axis’ expansion into North America, which will give them access to a much larger market.

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Until now, Tilted Axis has had to license its translations to American publishers to get its books into the United States, and just nine of its titles were acquired. Now that it can sell directly through American bookstores, Tilted Axis is bringing out a mix of new books and older works that never landed a U.S. publisher.

The first batch of 11 titles arriving this month offers a sampling of the press’s stylistic and geographic range, with works like “Again I Hear These Waters,” a collection featuring poetry by 21 Assamese writers, translated by Shalim M. Hussain; “I Belong to Nowhere,” a poetry collection by the Dalit feminist activist Kalyani Thakur Charal, translated from Bengali by Mrinmoy Pramanick and Sipra Mukherjee, and Hamid Ismailov’s novel “The Devils’ Dance,” translated from Uzbek by Donald Rayfield.

Ismailov, who fled Uzbekistan under threat of arrest in 1992 and settled in Britain, originally published “The Devils’ Dance” in Uzbek on Facebook, chapter by chapter, after finishing it in 2012. A sample translation caught the attention of Tilted Axis, which published it in 2018.

The novel — which interweaves the story of the Uzbek writer Abdulla Qodiriy, who was executed in 1938 during Stalin’s purges, and the historical novel that Qodiriy was unable to finish — became the first major literary work from Uzbekistan to be translated into English. Its success led to the translation of several more of his books.

Ismailov credits the press with “giving voice to the silenced, making the unheard heard, and supporting banished writers from all over the world,” he said in an email.

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“To this day, I remain banned in Uzbekistan as a writer, as a name,” Ismailov said. “Tilted Axis was bold enough to publish my work.”

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The impact of being only player from your country to play in the Premier League

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The impact of being only player from your country to play in the Premier League

Gunnar Nielsen’s Premier League career was brief.

Extremely brief, in fact: it lasted 17 minutes. The goalkeeper was introduced as a late substitute for Manchester City against Arsenal in 2010 after Shay Given had aggravated a shoulder injury he picked up a week earlier when diving in vain for Paul Scholes’s late winner in the Manchester derby.

But it was a big deal back home. Those 17 minutes represented the first — and only — time a player from the Faroe Islands had played in the Premier League. It was such a big deal that a local radio station couldn’t even wait until the game had finished to call his brother for some reaction. Happily, Nielsen kept a clean sheet, avoiding the decidedly awkward prospect of his brother having to offer some live, on-air comment on an embarrassing blunder.

“He was so nervous he couldn’t say a word,” Nielsen says now. “He just gave the phone to my sister-in-law.”

Nielsen is part of an unusual little club of players, a group that was joined recently by new City signing Abdukodir Khusanov, the defender from Uzbekistan: they are two of 18 men to be the only players from their respective countries to make an appearance in the Premier League.

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Neilsen made his only Premier League appearance in April 2010 (Neil Tingle – PA Images via Getty Images)

So as you can imagine, it was pretty big news in the Faroes when Nielsen made his appearance. TV and radio coverage was a given, but his almost literal 15 minutes of fame was the talk of the town. “I spoke to a bouncer at a nightclub who I knew,” Nielsen says. “He said the only thing everybody spoke about on that Saturday evening was how I made my appearance in the Premier League.

“It was such a big thing when it happened. I remember people were sending me pictures and texting me and calling me — to this day I meet people who still say they remember where they were at that exact time when I came on.”

Khusanov is the second player to join the club this season, after Ipswich Town striker Ali Al-Hamadi became the first Iraqi to grace the division when he came on in the opening game of the season against Liverpool.

For the sake of completeness, the others are: Victor Wanyama (Kenya), Henrikh Mkhitaryan (Armenia), Onel Hernandez (Cuba), Junior Firpo (Dominican Republic), Nathaniel Mendez-Laing (Guatemala), Danny Higginbotham (Gibraltar), Ryan Donk (Suriname), Ali Al-Habsi (Oman), Jordi Amat (Indonesia), Hamza Choudhury (Bangladesh), Dylan Kerr (Malta), Mbwana Samatta (Tanzania), Frederic Nimani (Central African Republic), Neil Etheridge (Philippines) and Zesh Rehman (Pakistan).

By definition, the nations on that list are not traditional football powerhouses. Some of the players had a slight leg-up, given that they were born and raised in bigger or more recognisable football environments, but played for another country due to a familial connection. Amat, Choudhury, Rehman, Etheridge, Hernandez, Firpo, Mendez-Laing, Higginbotham and Donk fall into that category.

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But some of the others grew up in surroundings where there simply weren’t any role models to show them the path to one of Europe’s big leagues. They are trailblazers.

“You need to see someone that’s done it before,” Nielsen tells The Athletic. “We’re closely connected to Denmark, so you’re looking up to players from there, but (not having a Faroese example) did not make it easier. There hadn’t been anyone in the Premier League from the Faroe Islands, and even though there were some young players who had been on youth contracts at some Premier League clubs, there wasn’t anyone to look up to in that sense.”

Wanyama didn’t have a compatriot to show him the path to the Premier League either but he was lucky in that he, at least, did have some more immediate role models, such as his brother, McDonald Mariga, who joined Parma in Serie A when Wanyama was 16. Before that, Wanyama followed Mariga to Helsingborgs in Sweden, briefly returning home when the elder brother went to Italy, before properly starting his European journey with Beerschot, in Belgium. It also didn’t hurt that his father, Noah, played for and coached Nairobi-based side AFC Leopards.


Wanyama playing for Tottenham in 2019 (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

“I grew up in a football family,” Wanyama tells The Athletic. “I used to watch the Premier League — I grew up watching those games. When I was 11, I was already dreaming about being there one day. I loved Roy Keane and Paul Scholes.

“My father was a coach, my brother played: it was something very deep. It was in our blood. I wanted to play on the biggest stage. I was aware the Premier League was the toughest league in the world. I knew it would be tough to get into, which motivated me.”

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Etheridge’s situation was slightly different. Born and raised in England, the goalkeeper qualified to play for the Philippines through his mother. He would travel to the Philippines fairly regularly growing up but, for various reasons, didn’t go back for years. Then, at 18, his former team-mates in the Chelsea youth team and Filipino internationals James and Phil Younghusband suggested him for a place in the squad too. He made his debut in 2008, has clocked up more than 80 caps and was named national team captain in 2022.


Neil Etheridge in action for Cardiff against Manchester City in 2019 (Oli Scarff / AFP)

“I just felt a connection with the country and the people,” Etheridge says from Thailand, where he is now playing. “The Philippines is an extremely proud country. The culture and blood runs through you. I was only 18, but I saw a chance to make a change in a country that is not necessarily football-orientated. Basketball is the No 1 sport. Back then, football wasn’t really a sport that was recognised.”

He’s not kidding. They had sunk to 195th in the world around the time Etheridge was first called up, and had little to no record in international competition. Their highest ranking in the intervening years of 111 might not seem great, but they qualified for the Asian Cup for the first time in 2019 and made it to the second round of qualifying for the 2014 World Cup, again the first time the team had gone that far.

Etheridge achieved most of this before playing in the Premier League for the first time, eventually doing so in 2017 after winning promotion with Cardiff. “It was a massive deal,” he says. “Although it wasn’t as big as if a Filipino played in the NBA, and Manny Pacquiao is the No 1 sportsperson in the country by a country mile. I was probably more recognised as the first South East Asian player to play in the Premier League, rather than the first Filipino.

“I’ve been able to do a lot of first. In 2010, we reached the semi-finals of the South East Asian Cup (AFF Cup) for the first time and that was when football blew up in the Philippines. Even now, 15 years later, it’s still in infant stages, but it’s something I’m proud to be a part of, to put football on the map in the country.”

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National identity can be a slightly complicated, non-binary and sometimes fluid thing, so it’s worth offering some parameters: the players are defined as being ‘from’ their particular country either if they were born there and haven’t represented another country, or if they have represented that country at full international level.

There are some curiosities on the list. The Premier League has seen several players who were born in Suriname and went on to represent the Netherlands (Regi Blinker, Edgar Davids, Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink), but Donk, the only player to represent Suriname, was born in the Netherlands.

A few on the list weren’t classed as being from their respective nations while playing in the Premier League. Higginbotham played a few games for Gibraltar, but those were a long time after his Southampton/Sunderland/Stoke City pomp. Mendez-Laing’s debut for Guatemala came when he was in League One with Derby, a few years after his top-flight days with Cardiff.

Danny Higginbotham

Danny Higginbotham back in his playing days for Stoke City in 2010 (Mike Egerton/PA Images via Getty Images)

Then there are the grey areas, such as former Brighton & Hove Albion midfielder Mahmoud Dahoud, who is counted on some lists as Syria’s sole representative. He was born in Syria and raised in Germany, for whom he played two friendlies in 2020 so was thus regarded as German while in England. However, in 2024, he switched allegiance to the nation of his birth and was called up to Syria’s squad… only to pull out before actually playing. He may still represent them in the future, but we’re not counting him for now.

Then there’s Equatorial Guinea. Emilio Nsue, who was born and raised in Spain and made four appearances for Middlesbrough in the Premier League, played 45 times for Equatorial Guinea between 2013 and 2024 and won the Golden Boot at the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations. However, he might not count, as in 2024 FIFA ruled he had been ineligible the whole time.

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Back in 2013, the Equatoguinean Football Federation applied to their Spanish counterparts for Nsue to switch nationalities (he had made several competitive appearances for various Spain youth teams), but to say the least there were some irregularities with the process. They defaulted two 2014 World Cup qualifying games due to Nsue’s ineligibility, but they kept picking him anyway, and did so at various intervals over the following decade. It genuinely seems that FIFA only noticed due to his heroics at AFCON, at which point they declared his whole international career null and void.

So…does he count? Are we getting into a weird, metaphysical area by acting as if Nsue’s international appearances literally never happened, rather than administratively never happened? If so Pedro Obiang, the only other Equatorial Guinea international, becomes the 19th individual on this list. But for now, we’ll go with tangible reality and credit Equatorial Guinea with two Premier League players.


Of course, the Premier League is not the pinnacle for everyone. It’s not necessarily the case that every player slept on Barclays bed sheets and their only desire as a kid was to play in England.

Take Wanyama, for example. “It was a bigger deal to play for Celtic,” he says, “because it was the team I grew up supporting. Particularly in the Glasgow derby.”

For most of these players, playing in the Premier League was a source of personal pride, but the hope is they can be the inspiration and role model that they didn’t have when they were younger.

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“Without wanting to blow my own trumpet,” says Etheridge, “if it wasn’t for me and the success I’ve had, there would be a lot of football players who wouldn’t have had a career in the game. A lot of people wouldn’t even have known that the Philippines had a team, if it wasn’t for the likes of myself, and the success I had later in my career, playing in the Premier League, being able to really enhance our national team. There are a lot of people around the world who have decided to play for the Philippines because they now know what the Philippines national team is.”

Wanyama adds: “I’m proud if I have made young players dream, to believe in themselves that they could play in the Premier League one day. Now everyone wants to be there, and they know the door is open to them. They believe they can do it too.”

(Top photos: Getty Images)

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