Desports: The First Sports Magazine to Read with a Bookmark

Desports, a new beautiful sport magazine with literary texts and historical reports.

HTBS’s Hélène Rémond writes from France,

On January 24, editors Adrien Bosc and Victor Robert launched a new publication in France, Desports. It is a "mook" (a mix of magazine and book) dedicated to sports which aims at offering literary texts, historical reports, stories and analysis not tackled in the news. In short, it is a work mingling sports journalism and literature.

The reviews in the French press acknowledge the demanding and intelligent writing Desports puts to the fore. Writers, philosophers and other intellectuals share their reports. In the first issue, the reader discovers Italian film director and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini’s passion for football, the story of the first boxing World Championship in 1916 which saw Arthur Cravan – Oscar Wilde’s nephew – and Jack Johnson in a contest of strength, and much more.

There is a list of the top quotations by Swedish football player Zlatan Ibrahimovic (who is currently playing for the French club Paris Saint-Germain), including the conjugation of the French verb “zlataner”, this neologism meaning “to dominate”. The issue also contains articles about cricket and Samuel Beckett, who was “better in sport than in English”, as well as artistic Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, and jumping over camels in Yemen, etc. Hopefully, there will be articles on rowing soon.

The 300-page magazine, which is published by Editions du Sous-sol, is a beautiful object in a hard cover, with thick paper, attractive typography and stunning photographs and drawings in an 18x24cm format – and no advertising. It is sold in good bookshops only, at 20€ in France and available online, too, take a look here or here.

The next issue of Desports is planned to come out on 24 May.

Desports is on Twitter @revuedesports and on Facebook.