Tom Sharpe Livres

C'est en sortant son chien que Wilt réfléchit à la méthode la plus efficace pour se débarrasser de sa femme, devenue bien trop encombrante à son goût. Wilt est à la croisée des chemins : professeur de culture générale dans un lycée technique pour étudiants demeurés, sa carrière est au point mort. Marié depuis bien trop longtemps à une femme frustrée et complexée, Wilt est en quête d'absolu. Il rêve de gloire, une gloire que le monde lui refuse depuis trop longtemps, et de crime, un crime dont il est sûr qu'il ferait craquer les derniers verrous qui ligotent son existence. Bref, Wilt est en crise, la crise de la quarantaine, identitaire et profonde mais incapable de prendre une décision radicale. La rencontre de sa femme avec une (fausse) riche voisine, adepte des jeux du sexe et des mauvais coups, va plonger la famille Wilt dans une centrifugeuse d'événements des plus inattendus... Tom Sharpe est sans aucun doute l'un des écrivains anglais les plus drôles de sa génération. Et Wilt l'idéale créature de son imaginaire littéraire. Cette critique de la déraison pure, drôle à souhait, n'en est pas moins une hilarante mais brillante mise en cause de notre société de consommation et des valeurs de la bourgeoisie. --Hector Chavez

Il est d'une méchanceté inouïe et déteste la terre entière à commencer par sa propre famille ! Quel motif haineux peut donc bien pousser Lord Putrefact, l'un des plus riches industriels d'Angleterre et l'un des plus originaux, à inviter en sa demeure le jeune et virulent professeur Walden Yapp, connu pour ses opinions extrémistes ? On retrouvera dans ce scénario désopilant ce concentré d'Angleterre farfelue, modèle de ces productions type Monty Python que nous envions tant à nos voisins d'outre-Manche et dont Tom Sharpe s'est fait le plus valeureux des hérauts.

Frensic, honorable agent littéraire, reçoit un jour le manuscrit d'un roman, Pitié, ô hommes, pour la vierge. Le sujet en est délicieusement scandaleux : il traite des amours d'un jeune homme avec une très vieille dame, et l'auteur tient absolument à rester anonyme. Frensic et son assistante Sonia Futtle décident alors de " monter un coup " littéraire. Ils choisissent, comme prête-nom, un obscur écrivaillon qui s'est vu refuser un ouvrage : Peter Piper. Ils remettent le livre à un éditeur de renom mais ruiné, Geoffrey Corkadale, et obtiennent de l'argent du richissime Hutchmeyer. La machine est en route pour lancer sur le marché ce qui doit être, assurément, un best-seller. Et tout rate. Les intrigues amoureuses succèdent aux querelles de pouvoir, les complots aux combines, à une vitesse ahurissante. La grande poursuite est un des romans les plus drôles que la Grande-Bretagne ait jamais produits.

No writer has combined laughter with savagery more devastatingly than Saki. Though he died nearly ninety years ago, the blackness of his comedy is contemporary and his wit has lost none of its freshness and sparkle. At Edwardian tea tables, his elegant characters defend themselves against a malignant Nature waiting to kill and maim. As Tom Sharpe says, ‘Step out through the French windows and you are in the realms of Pan . . .’ This selection of the best of Saki’s stories gives a new generation the opportunity to be dazzlingly entertained – and to discover a rare and original contribution to English literature. ‘Start a Saki story and you will finish it. Finish one and you will start another, and having finished them all you will never forget them. They remain an addiction because they are much more than funny’ Tom Sharpe

This volume contains three of Tom Sharpe's most famous novels: "Blott on the Landscape"; "Wilt Alternative"; and "The Great Pursuit".

Described as 'the greatest fossilist the world ever knew', this fully illustrated biography of Mary Anning highlights her significant contributions to paleontology. Drawing on recent research, Tom Sharpe offers a fresh perspective on Anning's life and character, showcasing her achievements as she gains the recognition she deserves. Born in 1799 in Lyme Regis, Anning made her living by discovering and selling fossils, revealing a previously unknown world of extinct reptiles that transformed our understanding of life on Earth. Despite her humble beginnings and lack of formal education, she emerged as a prominent figure in the early nineteenth-century geological community, gaining recognition across Europe. However, societal inequalities of class, gender, and wealth meant that she received little reward for her groundbreaking work, often overshadowed by her male counterparts. Following her death at forty-seven, Anning's contributions faded into obscurity, and her name became disconnected from her discoveries. Fortunately, her legacy has been revived, as she was recently recognized as one of the ten most influential women in British science. This biography celebrates her life and achievements, affirming her rightful place in the remarkable narrative of fossils and the Jurassic world.

A humourous novel in which a further series of mishaps await Henry Wilt at Fenland Technical College. Things soon get out of hand when he is suspected of drug dealing and his wife decides to perk up his home brew with herbal stimulants. From the author of GRANTCHESTER GRIND and WILT.

This title involves left-wing academics, right-wing capitalists, true-blue country gentry, workers, peasants, police and lawyers.

Set in South Africa, this broad, brutal farce begins when AfrikaansKommandant van Heerden, chief of police in the little town of Piemburg, takes a short vacation. While he indulges his Anglophile tendencies by trying to ingratiate himself with some would-be upper-class Britons, Liutenantthis is Afrikaans spelling Verkramp decides to make his part of South Africa safe from the communist threat once and for all. This he undertakes by blowing up the town's main facilities and by arresting and torturing the main citizens. Then, upon the suggestion of libidinous psychiatrist Dr. von Blimenstein, Verkramp subjects all police officers to aversion therapy to keep them away from black women. The experiment goes awry, and the police force becomes homosexual. Called back from his vacation after cuckolding his host on a fox hunt, van Heerden finds Piemburg a shambles and a raving mad Verkramp about to marry Dr. von Blimenstein. In the apocalyptic climax, van Heerden saves face with his superiors while exacting revenge on his snobbish former hosts. This timely satire will strike readers either as hilarious or beside the point. --Publisher's Weekly

A group of locals try to stop a proposed highway.

A brilliant, biting, bestselling satire from the foremost satirist in the English language of his generation.

Peregrine Roderick Clyde-Brown, a bumbling British public schoolboy, has a penchant for taking the most innocent commands literally. His adventures whisk him to a French castle, where he commits murder and mayhem. British humor is rarely captured as effectively as this. Fry accomplishes an incredible range of accents and distinctions of age, occupation and sex. If hearing an imitation of a man with a missing lower denture tickles you, then Vintage Stuff is right up your alley. "When Tom Sharpe turns his attention to a very minor public school…the result is predictably savage. Hoaxes, chases, car crashes, shootings, and general mayhem. Wicked, riotous humour.” —Daily Telegraph

Sharpe's scintillating first novel, which established his name as the new master of comic fiction and paved the way to bestsellerdom, is a devastating look at the culture and society of South Africa, which he experienced at first hand. New cover reissue.

Porterhouse College is world renowned for its gastronomic excellence, the arrogance of its Fellows, its academic mediocrity and the social cachet it confers on the athletic sons of county families. Sir Godber Evans, ex-Cabinet Minister and the new Master,

It's crisis time again at Porterhouse. Skullion is showing signs of frailty and the tricky task of appointing a new Master has to begin once more. Meanwhile, the college's monstrous debts refuse to go away and a sinister American seems determined to make a film on the premises.

Brilliantly written and bitingly funny, Tom Sharpe's indefatigable hero is pitted against the vices of an aristocratic pervert, the merciless greed of a politician's wife and the seedy underbelly of Britain's medical facilities, deftly exposing the farcic

Stuck in a job he doesn't want but can't afford to lose, Wilt is still subject to the whims of the powers that be, both in and out of work. The demands of his snobbish wife Eva, and the stupendous school fees of his despicable quadruplet daughters, cause him the biggest headaches, apart from the hangovers that is.

A brilliantly funny novel about what happens when the women take charge. The Gropes are an old English family based in Northumberland, separated from the rest of society and as eccentric as they come. It is a line dominated by strong-willed and oversexed women, determined to produce more female heirs regardless of whether their desired partners are willing or not.

Timothy Bright does not live up to his name. Brought up to regard ever-lasting wealth as his birthright, he cannot understand why the funds have been cut off and why friends recruited as Lloyd's Names no longer talk to him. When gambling fails and embezzlement starts, mayhem ensues

Жил в Англии человек по фамилии Флоуз. Поместье Флоуза, Флоуз-холл, располагалось у Флоузовских болот, за Флоузовыми холмами, в продуваемой холодными ветрами и поросшей вереском унылой каменистой пустыне. Единственное, что напоминало о цивилизации в этих полудиких краях, — руины пограничной стены, возведенной близ Флоуз-холла древними римлянами. Так вот, у этого самого Флоуза был сын, которого звали Локхарт. Только папаша Флоуз ни в какую не хотел сына усыновлять, поскольку сомневался в истинности своего отцовства. И вот однажды во время морского путешествия папаша и его сомнительный отпрыск влюбляются в путешествующих на том же судне мамашу с дочкой. Тут-то и начинаются приключения, причем такие, какие не приснятся даже в бредовом сне. Том Шарп — особое явление в современной английской литературе юмора, его голос неповторим, и "Флоузы" — убедительное тому подтверждение.

Der neue Rektor von Porterhouse College plant Ungeheuerliches: Porterhouse soll nicht nur wieder ein höheres Bildungsniveau erreichen, es sollen auch noch Studentinnen zugelassen werden. Doch erst die geplante Entlassung des Oberpförtners Skullion bricht dem Rektor das Genick, denn mit Skullion nahm es noch keiner auf...

Все началось с того, что Фредерику Френсику, неудачливому литературному агенту и несостоявшемуся писателю, прислали почтовую бандероль с рукописью. Ни имени автора, ни обратного адреса на присланном сочинении не было. На титульном листе значилось: "ДЕВСТВА РАДИ ПОМЕДЛИТЕ О МУЖЧИНЫ. РОМАН". Так начинается умопомрачительно смешная история о поисках неизвестного автора, история, в которой будут и ожившие трупы, и безумные сыщики, и много чего другого, столь же непредсказуемого и нелепого. Не будет в ней только скуки.

Henry Wilt está harto de dar clases de literatura en un politécnico inglés, y más teniendo en cuenta sus "selectos" alumnos, entre los que se encuentran el jefe de una red de traficantes de droga y varios oficiales norteamericanos de una base militar cercana. Cuando en la escuela aparece muerta por sobredosis la hija de un lord y en la base aérea cunde el pánico por culpa de un presunto espía soviético, las cosas se ponen feas para Wilt, No sólo el inspector Flint aprovecha la oportunidad para resarcirse de las anteriores travesuras del profesor: también los militares norteamericanos empiezan a perseguirlo. Otra aventura de la serie de Wilt, contada con el mismo sarcasmo y humor negro de siempre.

1989 Gebundene Ausgabe