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.
A splendid send-up of government, the postal system, and everything that lies in between in this newest entry in Terry Pratchetts internationally bestselling Discworld series. Convicted con man and forger Moist von Lipwig is given a choice: Face the hangmans noose, or get Ankh Morporks ancient Post Office up and running efficiently! It was a tough decision . . . Now, the former criminal is facing really big problems. Theres tons of undelivered mail. Ghosts are talking to him. One of the postmen is 18,000 years old. And you really wouldnt want to know what his new girlfriend can do with a shoe. To top it all off, shadowy characters dont want the mail moved. Instead, they want him deaddeader than all those dead letters. (And here hed thought that all hed have to face was rain, snow, and gloom of night . . .)
