Featured on The Book Show on Sky Arts on 1 April 2010.

A writer who had more titles on the BBC’s Big Read Top 100 than any other living author, only Charles Dickens matched him. At the start Pratchett was categorised comic fantasy for he sets his Discworld books in an alternative universe and peoples them with witches, wizards and the like. It is a stage upon which he places his players in situations that enables him to mirror our world and therefore pinpoint its faults, idiosyncratic traits, ludicrous bureaucracy or just plain prejudices, injustices, stupidity and the like, i.e. he has developed into one of the most important satirists writing today. This astute masterpiece tears into the postal service. Truth did the same for the newspaper industry. Monstrous Regiment is one of the best books on war and gender you are likely to come across. He is a man who needs reading. His next Discworld, Thud, comes into hardback at the same time.

Comparison: Jasper Fforde, Douglas Adams, Robert Rankin.
Similar this month: None but try Haruki Murakami or Stephen Donaldson.

Synopsis

Moist von Lipwig is a con artist… … and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork’s ailing postal service back on its feet. It’s a tough decision. But he’s got to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers’ Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer. Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too. Maybe it’ll take a criminal to succeed where honest men have failed, or maybe it’s a death sentence either way. Or perhaps there’s a shot at redemption in the mad world of the mail, waiting for a man who’s prepared to push the envelope…

Reviews

‘Pratchett’s joy in his creations, in jokes, puns, the idea of letters and language itself, makes Going Postal one of the best expressions of his unstoppable flow of comic invention’
The Times

‘With all the puns, strange names and quick-fire jokes about captive letters demanding to be delivered, it’s easy to miss how cross with injustice Pratchett can be. This darkness and concrete morality sets his work apart from imitators of his English Absurd school of comic fantasy’

Guardian

About the Author

Sir Terry Pratchett is one of the most popular authors writing today. He lives behind a keyboard in Wiltshire and says he 'doesn't want to get a life, because it feels as though he's trying to lead three already'. He was appointed OBE in 1998 and in 2009 was knighted for his services to literature. He is the author of the phenomenally successful Discworld series and his trilogy for young readers, The Bromeliad, is scheduled to be adapted into a spectacular animated movie. His first Discworld novel for children, THE AMAZING MAURICE AND HIS EDUCATED RODENTS, was awarded the 2001 Carnegie Medal. In December 2007 he announced that he had been diagnosed with Posterior Cortical Atrophy, a rare variant of Alzheimer's disease. More books by this author Author 'Like for Like' recommendation