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.
| Primary Genre | Fantasy |
| Recommendations: |
Discover the gloriously inventive and funny fantasy novel from bestselling author Terry Pratchett, the first book in the Industrial Revolution series, part of the Discworld novels.
'One of the best expressions of his unstoppable flow of comic invention' The Times
'If you only read one Terry Pratchett book, read this one. You WILL be hooked' 5-star reader review
'Always push your luck because no one else would push it for you.'
Imprisoned in Ankh-Morpork, con artist Moist von Lipwig is offered a choice: to be executed or to accept a job as the city's Postmaster General.
It's a tough decision, but he's already survived one hanging and isn't in the mood to try it again.
The Post Office is down on its luck: beset by mountains of undelivered mail, eccentric employees, and a dangerous secret order. To save his skin, Moist will need to restore the postal service to its former glory, with the help of tough talking activist Adora Belle Dearheart. Who happens to be very attractive, in an 'entire womanful of anger' kind of way.
But there's new technology to compete against and an evil chairman who will stop at nothing to delay Ankh-Morpork's post for good . . .
Going Postal is the first book in the Industrial Revolution series, but you can read the Discworld novels in any order.
Praise for the Discworld series:
'[Pratchett's] spectacular inventiveness makes the Discworld series one of the perennial joys of modern fiction' Mail on Sunday
'Pratchett is a master storyteller' Guardian
'One of our greatest fantasists, and beyond a doubt the funniest' George R.R. Martin
'One of those rare writers who appeals to everyone' Daily Express
'One of the most consistently funny writers around' Ben Aaronovitch
'Masterful and brilliant' Fantasy & Science Fiction
'Pratchett uses his other world to hold up a distorting mirror to our own… he is a satirist of enormous talent ... incredibly funny ... compulsively readable' The Times
'The best humorous English author since P.G. Wodehouse' The Sunday Telegraph
'Nothing short of magical' Chicago Tribune
'Consistently funny, consistently clever and consistently surprising in its twists and turns' SFX
'[Discworld is] compulsively readable, fantastically inventive, surprisingly serious exploration in story form of just about any aspect of our world…There's never been anything quite like it' Evening Standard
Going Postal features in the following genres: Fantasy, eBooks of the Month, Fiction, Recommendations
Going Postal is available in Paperback, Hardback, Ebook, Paperback (a Format)
Going Postal was written by Terry Pratchett and published by Penguin Books an imprint of Transworld
Going Postal has 488 pages
Yes it is part of A Discworld Novel series
£9.89
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