The short story collection A Beer Before Lunch is about how to become lost in the occasionally anarchic, always intoxicating city of Recife in the north east of Brazil. Funny, touching and occasionally tragic, it covers football, friendship, love, sex, death, loss and everything in between. James Young lived in Recife between 2007 and 2012. He is now based in the considerably less exciting city of Belo Horizonte in the south east of Brazil, where he writes about the country and its football for The Independent, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, ESPN, Al-Jazeera, the Folha de Sao Paulo and assorted other publications and sites.