Fauja Singh Keeps Going: The True Story of the Oldest Person to Ever Run a Marathon by Simran Jeet Singh (review)

Nobody in Fauja's Punjab village understood why he took so long to walk, and nobody expected that even when he did—ever so weakly—he'd amount to much. The miles-long walk to school was too much for him, so he stayed on the family farm, worked hard, and grew stronger. Marriage, children, and what seemed like a very full life later, eighty-one-year-old Fauja moved to England to be near family, and he was miserable. Watching runners on TV sparked a new ambition, though, and with self training and later a professional coach, he reinvented his life as a marathon runner, first for his own satisfaction, and then to show a prejudiced world the dignity and accomplishment of the poorly understood Sikh community. Off to a great start completing the London Marathon at the age of eighty-nine, he finished the NYC Marathon at ninety-three (not a great experience—there was racist heckling, a fall, and a personal slow finish); then with a comeback at 100 in the Toronto Waterfront Marathon, he set a record for the oldest person to complete a marathon. The sunshiny cheeriness of Kaur's digitized hand drawing and collage artwork is judiciously tempered with flashes of sadness and bitterness that break through in moments of Singh's greatest challenges and disappointments, and the individuated expressions of even minor and background characters register the range of reactions the white-bearded, turbaned runner regularly encountered. Singh supplies his own foreword, while an author's note expands on the runner and his Sikh faith. A photograph and lists of Singh's UK and world records are also included.