The Great Pursuit

Author: Sharpe, Tom

Brand: Penguin Random House

Binding: paperback

Number Of Pages: 384

Release Date: 16-01-2004

Details: Product Description
Frensic and Futtle is a small and successful literary agency. But following a successful court case by a woman who claimed to have been libeled by one of their authors, the agency rapidly loses business.One day, a manuscript for a book called Pause O Men for the Virgin arrives at the agency, together with a note from the author's solicitor, saying that the author wishes to remain anonymous and that the agency has carte blanche on how it deals with the book. The book turns out to deal with the love affair between an 80-year old woman and a 17-year old youth.The populist American publisher Hutchmeyer agrees to sign a deal to publish the book in the United States for $2 million, providing the author carries out a promotional tour of the country. Sonia and Frensic decide to use aspiring but unpublished author Peter Piper to stand in for the anonymous author. But when Piper receives a proof copy of Pause from the publisher by mistake, it takes a certain amount of persuasion and arm-twisting from Sonia Futtle to convince Piper to travel to America.
Review
Tom Sharpe has now turned his weapons of comic destructiveness onto that sitting target or lame duck: the literary world ―
Observer

Mr Sharpe constructs his plot with immense care. He also, more to the point, has a nice line in lewd jokes. I understand that this sort of thing isn't to everybody's taste, but I laughed out loud -- Guy Bellamy ―
Punch

Individual blend of robust farce and deeply cutting satire ―
The Listener

Tom Sharpe is the funniest novelist writing today -- Philip Howard ―
The Times
About the Author
Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his national service in the Marines before moving to South Africa in 1951, where he did social work before teaching in Natal. He had a photographic studio in Pietermaritzburg from 1957 until 1961, and from 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology.He is the author of sixteen bestselling novels, including Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape, which were serialised on television, and Wilt, which was made into a film. In 1986 he was awarded the XXIIIème Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret, and in 2010 he was awarded the inaugural BBK La Risa de Bilbao Prize. Tom Sharpe died in June 2013 at his home in northern Spain.

EAN: 9780099435495

Package Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.0 x 1.1 inches

Languages: English