In the strangeness of mid-summer 2024, the cosmopolitan novelist Joseph O’Neill is our bridge between the Republican convention in Milwaukee and the Summer Olympics in Paris. He knows both sides of that gap: politics and global celebrity sports.

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Joseph O’Neill.

He’s famous as an amateur cricket player in New York, of all places, and as a writer about cricket and the many meanings of sports in general. His new novel, Godwin, is deep into soccer/football in a wild intercontinental search for the next superstar, the next Lionel Messi or Kylian Mbappé.