The start of a new series from the wonderful writer of the ‘Thursday Next’ and ‘Nursery Crimes’ books.  In my opinion this is his best work yet and with it he has attained a new level of brilliance.  It’s a thriller and a love story, and very funny, but there is an underlying philosophy that gives this novel something more than its predecessors had.  Something that keeps you stuck to the pages and rooting for the hero, but also something that lingers in the mind long after the last page is gone.  It’s clever, it’s exciting, it’s amusing and it’s astonishingly good.  Read it, I’m serious, just read it.

Synopsis

No one could cheat the Colourman and the colour test. What you got was what you were, forever. Your life, career and social standing decided right there and then, and all worrisome life-uncertainties eradicated forever. You knew who you were, what you would do, where you would go, and what was expected of you. In return, you simply accepted your rung upon the Chromatic ladder, and assiduously followed the Rulebook. Your life was mapped. And all in the time it takes to bake a tray of scones ...Eddie Russett lives comfortably in a world where fortune, career and ultimate destiny are rigidly dictated by the colours you can see. Until he falls in love with a Grey named Jane, and starts to question every aspect of the Rulebook. Why are spoons illegal? And what actually happens to all those people who are sent to the Emerald City to Reboot?

Reviews

'Full of brilliantly inventive wordplay and quirky fabrications'
Mail on Sunday

'This colour-coded world of black-and-white regulations and heirachies is created with spry invention and wit'
Daily Mail

'A brilliantly written book, full of witticisms, wordplay and puns'
News of the World

'A chromatic tale of fantastical wackiness where colour becomes an aspirational commodity ... Jasper Fforde's most ambitious novel yet'
Herald

'SHADES OF GREY has something of a flavour of Terry Gilliam's Brazil...but the novel is much gentler than Gilliam's savage madcappery, and Fforde's world is more old-fashioned public school than bureaucratic nightmare'
Guardian 

About the Author

Jasper Fforde traded a varied career in the film industry for staring out of the window and sucking the end of a pencil. He lives and works in Wales and has a passion for aviation. Fellow novelist KERRY REICHS on JASPER FFORDE The Thursday Next and Nursery Crime series are a quirky treat for any bibliophile.  Fforde draws readers into hilarious and surreal alternative universes, such as a 1985 Britain where dodos are a common pet and the Goliath Corporation controls the world.  Favorite fictional characters have active lives behind their pages, and literary factionalism is more influential than politics.  Full of clever entertainment and sly references, The Eyre Affair is a tour de force of the small but highly entertaining science fiction literary detective thriller.  I view it as one of my greatest accomplishments that I was referenced as an “Out World” writer in First Among Sequels. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation