Tom Sharpe Books

No, no.
Yes, yes.
This sheds new light on the meaning of Whip. It's so degrading.

Tom Sharpe, Christopher Brookmyre, P.J. O'Rourke, Stephen Fry, P.G.Wodehouse - they all fall into the category of authors who REALLY make me laugh. If you mix up Billy Connelly and John Cleese, you'll get the idea. In Blott on the Landscape (which was turned into a BBC television series), Sharpe's humour is as sharp as ever (pun intended) and his characterizations are an absolute scream. Of course, it helps if you appreciate British humour which, at times, can be quite black. (A woman getting a lion to eat her own husband?)

Tom Sharpe's 'Wilt' books were comical enough but, in Blott on the Landscape and Porterhouse Blue, he excels even his own high standards of comic writing.

No need to look at of Tom Sharpe's novels if you are looking for refined literature. The man simply pumps out farcical stories which polk fun at the establishment and wealthy folks in particular. As with most farces, the reader can either find it all to be hilarious or simply stupid. Fortunately this reader found it to be hilarious.

'Blott on the Landscape' is about one woman's fight to keep her ancestral home at all costs, with the help of her gardener (Blott). We are exposed to the most improbable characters and actions imaginable, with rude behaviour and language in abundance. It all has a 1970s British television sitcom feel about it. Still I think most Brits will enjoy this book, and fortunately it is still in print over here.

Bottom line: Tom Sharpe in fine form. I'm still giggling.

Sir Giles Lynchwood, Conservative MP, schemes to have a motorway extend over his houses. He never liked the house and is in a position to earn quite a bit from the transaction. His wife who married him with the promise of children to keep the house and the estate going. The handyman, Lott a German refugee, fortifies the gatehouse to repel the construction crew. It is much more complex with subplots. Everyone has their own agenda and watch out for the lions.

Be sure to watch the mini-series also.
Many videos do not live up to the expectations of the book. This one may even surpass the book. All of the characters fit and all the irony hits you in the face. This was my first encounter with David Suchet (Blott). And you will recognize all the other major players including Geraldine James (Lady Maud Lynchwood).

Aside from his excellent performance on the audiotape; David Suchet is Blott in the mini-series. This tape is easy enough to follow that you can use it in the car. When following the book you can get a different perspective than the TV series offers. The TV series is now on DVD. I know Tom Sharpe's comedy is similar to other British comedies; however I really identify with the people that he describes. The people are similar in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy". Come to think of it the plot is similar in a domestic sort of way.

This is the first Tom Sharpe I read, and it just seems so much better that the others...I first saw the t.v. series, and was even more impressed by the book. I loved eveything about it, the plot, the exagerrated characters, the way everything fits together at the end. I was a bit disturbed that I could laugh so much about a woman deliberately letting a lion eat her (thoroughly horrible and worthless) husband, but this is the mad world that Tom Sharpe takes you to. Ther way the betrayed wife should become best friend and ally with her husbands mistress is just hysterical! My other favourite character was the poor,bureacratically challenged head of the motorway planning authourity who had none! A great book to escape into.

Henry Wilt is just a regular guy with 'semi' normal thoughts and ambitions, trying to get somewhere in life, except that those around him pay little or no attention to him at all. This drives him to conconct some wayward plan to remove the main thing that's kept him where he is: his wife, Eva. All things are going swimmingly until a chance-meeting with their new neighbours shifts his whole world to one where anything ridiculous and downright unbelievable ends up making a lot of sense.

It's the effortless way that Tom Sharpe interlocks the characters and circumstances in his books that makes them so addictive. I've never read a book where I literally burst out laughing, only to have to sink deeper into my seat to avoid the quizzical looks from those around me. I loved Blott On The Landscape and Porterhouse Blue (and I didn't think he could top them!), but Wilt is by far the best one I've read...and judging by the reviews that Amazon readers have been giving his other books, it seems the journey for me has just begun.

Wilt began Tom Sharpe's peculiar and irreverant view of life that is expanded throughout all his books since. One step outside the normal leads to two steps and before we know it we are in a parallel universe of the absurd that is very, very funny, outrageous, and essentially human, warts and all. Tom Sharpe has inspired some of the best new humour writer's of today. I think particularly of Robert Fox, who in Red Fox Goose Green takes the everyday in English village life -- the fox hunt, the church service, the pub -- and breathes Tom Sharpe style farce into the institutions that made Britain what it is.

If you enjoy satire, and you like it laced with sexual innuendo, profanity and wit, you will love Tom Sharpe's books, but you will particularly love Wilt, which takes you into the world and never-ending irony of lower-class British academia. Henry Wilt is miserable in his existence as a "Tech" lecturer, married to Eva, his incorrigibly energetic, enthusiastic and critical wife. He attempts to escape by way of fantasizing how he might murder Eva, who has recently taken up with the sexually wacky American couple next door. After an embarrassing encounter with an inflatable doll, Wilt decides to practice murder on it, and ends up being accused of murdering Eva. A fantastic read.

I bought this book 15 years ago when traveling. While waiting for a change of planes at Heathrow, I started reading, and couldn't put it down. I started chuckling to myself, then laughing out loud, then laughing so it hurt!! Other passengers were staring at me. I showed them what I reading and some of them nodded knowingly.

It is the funniest book I have ever read!

This is Sharp's best novel yet, the second detailing the life of Wilt a college lecturer and his severely disfunctional family. In what is basically a farce Sharpe's satire bites deep into every subject he touches, as Wilt comes under investigation by the police for drug dealing, infiltrates a US nuclear air base and has to use face cream to cool his burning uncontrolable penis. If my description of this novel sounds manic, the reason is simple, the book is manic. As an Englishman living in the US I am not sure if the humor travels well, but I hope my American friends can appreciate it, because this book is one of only three (all written by Tom) capable of making me laugh out loud wherever I am reading it (which can be most embarrasing). Try it and enjoy a different view of life and then be thankful you don't have to live Wilt's life.

There may not be a greater master of the English short story. Saki (H.H. Munro) writes from a period that is recent enough to be somewhat familiar, but remote enough to provide a bit of an exotic feel to the settings. These short short stories (typically 5 or 6 pages) are an uninterrupted series of gems. In a storytelling style full of grace, charm, and wit, Saki is unstinting in his criticism of the selfish, the self-centered, and the self-absorbed. About the only humans who are spared his sharp utensil are children, who frequently consort with Saki in piercing his victims. Delicious fun.

I read this entire collection over about two weeks. I would not recommend reading Saki's short stories this way. Before reaching the midpoint, one is so familiar with his style, approach, and aim that the element of surprise is somewhat dulled. These should be dipped into perhaps two or three at a time and then set aside for a month or two. Don't worry...they'll keep.

This is one of my favorite and most admired books, ever. An ideal collection of ideal short stories - witty, brief yet complete, and not a word wasted in creating tone and point. Funny and satisfying. Unsettling and creepy. Deliberate use of language and vocabulary that cuts and exposes. All of the above. Unforgettable: The charging stag. The baby playing with buttercups. Schartz-Metterklume.

Recommended without reservation, for a single sitting or a one-a-night from the bedside table.

Probably the only sane response, as a writer, to Edwardian England was to skewer it mercilessly. And nobody serves up a finer kebab than Saki. These stories are clever and hilariously funny. I think part of their appeal is that, although Munro can be merciless, one always senses an underlying affection for his targets. It's also pretty clear that Saki's sympathies are with those who lack clout in the established power structure of Edwardian society (children, for example), which makes me like him all the more.

A very funny book.

Saki's writing style is unique. His stories are mostly bleak and tragic. Some of his writing seems to have been influenced by his background and childhood experiences. However, they are amusing, interesting and tinged with humour.

Picador edition has wonderful, nicely written introduction that gives marvelous details of Saki's remarkable and short life, explaining well why his stories are usually so dark, and why he liked to take aim at stuffy old bats.

Nearly all of Saki's short stories are about some character exacting revenge upon cruel or shallow members of the British upper class. His writing sometimes feels labored and overwrought, with overlong sentences or ungainly descriptions. But his consistant style, sense of justice, and biting wit are the gems to be discovered within.

The earliest stories seemed to have a lack of balance between darkness and wit, but he did find his equilibrium and most of the later tales are deliciously satisfying.

Absolutely delightful reading if you liked Robert Altman's recent film Gosford Park, or if you are fed up with stuffy, mean upper class types.

Today I'm back--rebuying this book in hopes of reliving some of the experience it produced 20+ years ago when I read it on a transatlantic flight. Everyone around me was solemnly absorbed in tearjerker movie while I was convulsed to tears of laughter in their midst.

When I realized Indecent Exposure was a sequel to Riotous Assembly I raced from the airport to the bookstore and ordered that one too. It was no disappointment. That came when I voraciously bought nearly every other novel Tom Sharpe wrote and found none of his other works even came close to his 2 South Africa novels.

Small wonder that oppressive regime expelled him. I ought to mention that however slapstick funny this has been described to you (and it is!) it is not an appropriate gift for your 12-year-old niece. The uproarious misanthropy is midnight black and as politically incorrect for many Americans as it was subversive for South African censors.

Hilarious, extremely funny. This is one of the fiction works that have made me laugh more in my life, including films, comics, or whatever.
I read this book after discovering Sharpe trough Wilt' s saga. One tip: read the african novels first! I have read almost all the books from Sharpe, and I think the two south-african satiras are the best, specially Indecent Exposure.

Tom Sharpe's novels, always popular in Britain, are known for being rude spoofs on the political establishment and of the upper echelons of British society. However his earliest works, as in 'Indecent Exposure', the setting is apartheid-era South Africa. His humour is still very baudy, perhaps repetitively so, and his target are the hypocritical, racist white establishment. Some of the language is a bit vulgar, and I imagine some folks might be offended. But Sharpe hits the bulls-eye on his target: the squabbling, pretentious and myoptic white (English/Afrikaan) establishment.

As for the story? Well, it somewhat doesn't matter. Some nonsense about a rural town's police force trying to fight (imagined) communist insurgents using some rather ridiculous means. It's all very slapstick, farcical. Enjoy the book for its now dated (historical) view of South Africa, not for its paper thin story.

Bottom line: a very curious and funny piece of Sharpe's earlier works. Certainly not his best, but he delivers the laughs.

This book must be one of the funniest I've ever read. My girlfrind threw me out of bed at four in the morning because I'd apparently been laughing in my sleep after having read the book. The best thing about any of Tom Sharpe's books is that you can read them again and again and still laugh all over again! Superb!

What more can I say? Go read it! I read it about 12 years ago or more. It was fantastic. I read it at least once every 2-3 yrs after that and it has never failed to make me laugh again and again. Though Apartheid is dead, the humor is still valid worldwide. Read it as satire or just for its humour. Either way, you'll love it. By the way, dont be put off that its British and thus a bit heavy in the reading department. Its not. Its a great read and you could easily finish reading it in one day unless, of course, you fall off your chair or bed and injure yourself laughing. Believe me, I'm not exaggerating.

In short: a strait-laced Professor is asked to write a tell-all book about the less-than-perfect Petrefacts.

To the average writer, this scenario could probably get a little tee-hee from the readers, but leave it to Sharpe to throw into the mixture the riotous "Ablution Bath", some midgets (or PORG - Persons of Unrestricted Growth), a sex toy factory, an outrageous interrogation / Silence Of The Lambs-themed chapter, and a crazy carwash incident and you get Tom Sharpe at his best yet again. Even the scene where Lord Petrefact explains to Croxley what he'd like served for dinner is a gem on its own.

Now, I'm the type who throws a book to the nearest bin when the ending is less than ideal but somehow, whenever I read Tom Sharpe's books, as far off as they are to having conventional happy endings, I always manage to put them back on my shelf with a huge smile on my face. So do yourself a favour and grab this book - I'm sure you owe yourself a good long laugh!

Tom Sharpe writes some very wicked satire. His victims are typically the upper class, snobby English or, in his earlier works, the hypocritically rascist South Africans. Although very popular in the UK, his books are almost unknown in America ... too bad!

In 'Ancestral Vices' we have a loosely stiched story about a crusty and warped aristocratic family, a befuddled biographer, victimized dwarves, and a murder. It's a total farce. However the author's wit and humor are lethal, and the story somehow holds together until the very end (or near so).


Bottom line: perhaps not a classic but 'Ancestral Vices' does Tom Sharpe some justice. Recommended.

Introduced to Tom Sharpe's work by a Brit friend, I can't get enough of this amazing author! "Ancestral Vices" literally made my cry with laughter. Yapp's horrifying experience with the "Ablution Bath" sent me into gales of giggles, as did the run amok motorized wheelchair scenario. Lord Petrefact, Willie Coppett, the sex toy factory...all of it was enough to make a cat laugh. Sharpe is warped, twisted, and totally delightful! Simply, hysterically funny!

This book is funny - if you can stand grown-up humor and aren't one of those sexophobic weirdos. And besides being hillariously funny (had to laugh out loud just thinking about it), it is very highly intelligent, massively satiric, thrilling and thoroughly British. Not too intellectual, but not for dimwits either. If you don't like this book you are probably dead.

Tom Sharpe is the most hilarious writer. Ancestral vices is another piece of mad cap mayhem from the master.Fast paced laugh out loud parts. Its always one thing after another with Tom sharpe. Left-wing academics(Yapp)put up against,right-wing capitalists(the Petrefacts),throw in a sex toy factory a bunch of country bumpkins,and dwarves and this is what you get. Like I said total hilarious mayhem.

Sir Giles Lynchwood, Conservative MP, schemes to have a motorway extend over his houses. He never liked the house and is in a position to earn quite a bit from the transaction. His wife who married him with the promise of children to keep the house and the estate going. The handyman, Lott an East German refugee, fortifies the gatehouse to repel the construction crew. It is much more complex with subplots. Everyone has their own agenda and watch out for the lions.

Be sure to watch the mini-series also.
Many videos do not live up to the expectations of the book. This one may even surpass the book. All of the characters fit and all the irony hits you in the face. This was my first encounter with David Suchet (Blott). And you will recognize all the other major players including Geraldine James (Lady Maud Lynchwood).

Aside from his excellent performance on the audiotape version of the book; David Suchet is Blott in the mini-series. This tape is easy enough to follow that you can use it in the car. When following the book you can get a different perspective than the TV series offers. The TV series is now on DVD. I know Tom Sharpe's comedy is similar to other British comedies; however I really identify with the people that he describes. The people are similar in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to The Galaxy". Come to think of it the plot is similar in a domestic sort of way.

Blott on the Landscape

I "borrowed" this book from my dad, without knowing anything about Tom Sharpe or his style. Mr. Sharpe is a master of farce! I often found myself laughing uncontrollably at the antics of Wilt, his family and his colleagues. A great light read!

Tom Sharpe was born in London in 1928. He is perhaps best known for "Porterhouse Blue" and his Wilt series, both of which have been adapted for television. "The Throwback" is one of his standalone novels.

Lockhart Flawse has had a rather unusual upbringing. He was born in September 1956, in the shadow of a stone wall after his mother was thrown from her horse. Although he came through the labour alive - though, thanks to a patch of nettles, not entirely unscathed - his mother unfortunately didn't. This upset his grandfather, Edwin, somewhat - more so that she wasn't married and had steadfastly refused to name the boy's father. Lockhart was raised and educated entirely on his grandfather's estate. However, the lack of a birth certificate meant he didn't officially exist - his grandfather says he'll only register him when he knows who the father is. The education he received ensured he was an expert shot with excellent mental arithmetic and a high degree of fluency in Urdu, he knows somewhat less about human reproduction than his mother did.

Flawse the Elder is not an admirable character - it's entirely possible he was a close relation of Monty Burns. (He suffers from a nagging suspicion that he might be the Lockhart's father, as well as his grandfather - he's not entirely certain than a drunken encounter with the housekeeper wasn't a drunken encounter with someone else entirely). Unsurprisingly, he suffers from an acute superiority complex, enjoys hunting, fishing and shooting and - although he acknowledges that sex necessary for procreation - also takes the view that it's generally disgusting. However, when it comes to sex, he'll grasp every available opportunity to be disgusted.

Although Lockhart has had a very sheltered life, things change dramatically when he and his grandfather take a cruise. On-board, they meet the stunningly beautiful Jessica Sandicott and her widowed mother - naturally, the young couple fall head over heels in love and are swiftly married by the ship's captain. (This happens not only with the approval of their aged relatives, but practically at the insistence - they're both desperate to get rid of their dependents). However, as part of the negotiations, Edwin and Jessica's mother also wind up married. Mrs Sandicott is delighted, believing her new husband to be not only exceptionally rich, but also close to death. Unfortunately, it hasn't crossed her mind that she might be marrying someone at least as devious as she is : Edwin knows exactly what she is up to, and views her only as a housekeeper who will never need paying. On their return to England, the games the older pair play have all sorts of implications for the younger pair...and things turn a little dangerous when Edwin draws up his will. Luckily for the young couple, Lockhart proves to be every bit as devious as his grandfather. He can also rely on the help of Dodds, the gamekeeper at Flawse Hall, and two of his grandfather's old acquaintances: Dr Magrew and Mr Bullstrode, his solicitor.

A fast moving and occasionally daft book, though certainly funny and a very enjoyable read.

This book is probably the funniest piece of writing I've ever encountered. I literally laughed so hard I cried the first time I read it. Sharpe is a terrific writer of black comedy, and in my opinion (having read all his books) this is his best work. You will NOT be sorry with this purchase!

This is the hilariously funny saga of a young man who has no official existence, and who is totally naive concerning the facts of life. About other things he has a good grasp of the way they work, and when he settles down with his new bride, and his new bride's mother settles down with her new husband, things start to pop. It is difficult to say more without spoiling the plot, but suffice it to say that the plot, like the contents of the Dutch Cap, will keep, and you will be in stitches, unlike the Colonel's
Scarlet Lady.

This is not a book to take to read on an airplane. It is so uproarously funny that you might well find the flight diverted and escorted to the ground by fighters, and you packed off for observation. You have been warned.

The Throwback is my second Tom Sharpe novel (..the first being Wilt). So I was expected a non-stop barrage of comic (and absurd) scenes. Or rather, pure comedy thinly wrapped into what can loosely be called a novel. I was not disappointed.

The story, such as it is, concerns the travails of backwater yokels living in an obscure corner of northern England. The patriarch of a large estate is nearing death, and must decide on what to do about his will. His only surviving relative is a bastard grandson with unknown parentage. So he his will mandates his grandson needs to discover who his father is before inheriting money.

Ah, but there are complications. His grandson is a backward, bizarre young man who marries an extremely naive young woman from Surrey. Her mother has eyes on marrying the old patriach to get her hands on the loot. And so on. The story then spins into endless comic, sometimes very darkly comic, scenes.

My only complaint with The Throwback is, I suppose, its overall theme. In Wilt the leading character was a hapless middle-aged man who somehow gets into a world of (humorous) trouble. Much of the humour was also satiric. But in The Throwback it is the innocent people associated with the patriarch's grandson (and wife) who are cruelly victimised. Yes, it is very funny. But I couldn't help but feeling guilty about it all.

Bottom line: black, slapstick comedy in superior form. Not quite as enjoyable as Wilt, but Tom Sharpe certainly knows how to entertain his readers.

The base premise is really simple. Guy inherits a street of houses, but they are on long leases at low rent. The only way he can earn a living is to get the residents to leave.

So he engages on a meticulously planned campaign of side-splitting terror. The methods employed to rid himself of his reluctant residents are gruesome, medieval but oh so funny.

This is Tom Sharpe at his riproaring best.

Every now and then my life gets so jumbled, or my hormones rise or fall and depression sets in, and I just need a rousing good laugh. That's when I pick up this book. It has never failed to at least amuse or, more often, to induce a tears-in-my-eyes unrestrained laughing fit. While this can be disconcerting to co-workers in nearby cubicles, it nevertheless works wonders for my sour moods.

Totally loony in a restrained British (or in this case, South African) manner, this tale of apartheid, fetishism, gender role swapping, gigantic firearms and novocaine in the mythical South African town of Piemburg is quite simply a hoot.

That it works better than Prozac as a mood leveler (Fair warning-- I'm not a psychiatrist, I just play one on Amazon!) is a wonderful bonus.

This is political farce with a vengeance. The back jacket on the paperback says this book is not a political book in any imagined sense of that term and that's essentially true. The author's position on the old South African regime is pretty clear from the word "go" but it never dampens the fun.

The book is so over the top that its characters come off as cardboard cutouts of a caricature--yet, somehow, Sharpe still finds a way to imbue them with enough connective personality that we are drawn into the farce willingly. The book is extremely funny--I laughed out loud at least twenty times. It is a rather crude undertaking--but then again, so was the old South Africa, and this books achieves the unique aspect of being extremely sexually explicit while never actually rendering an actual sex scene--not for want of trying on the "heroines" part.

All in all a lot of fun is the crudity and explicitness don't put you off. If that's the case, seek humor elsewhere.

I enjoyed it enough that I have ordered another couple of Sharpe's books to see if they are as good. I have high hopes on that score.

This decidedly intemperate dark jewel has been criticized for, among other things, being short on a coherent logical plot. Fair enough. And saturated with unsympathetic characters. Point taken. So what? If you can find a better written rant of absurd, politically incorrect, howlingly hilarious black (as in motif, not ethnic) humor by all means set Riotous Assembly aside and go with your more entertaining discovery, and be so kind as to post its name here so that we may all partake.

Compared to Riotous Assembly, Mel Brooks' best sounds like a grim Savonarola tract.

If you're ever in the mood for a hugely over-the-top farce about apartheid-era South Africa, well, this is the book for you. Sharpe spent a decade there before being deported as a subversive, and after reading this unrestrained comic pummeling of the RSA, one can only wonder why it took the authorities so long to give him the boot. Indeed authority is target number one in this fast-paced story set in the small city of Piemburg. It all starts when an elderly semi-aristocratic Englishwoman calls the police to report that she's shot her Zulu cook. Refusing police Kommandant van Heerden's best attempts to cover up the matter, she reveals that the cook was also her lover, which so appalls him that he immediately declares a state of emergency and mobilizes the entire police force. And so begins a massive comedy of errors, in which a "Kaffir-Killer" Konstabel Els plays a large role, as does the slimy Luitenant Veerkamp, and matters take a turn for the utterly bizarre, as rubber fetishes, bondage, a drunken bishop, porno films, cross dressing, and penile novocain injections are all introduced to the plot. As one might surmise from such a litany, the plot spins ever more wildly out of control until events come to a head at--appropriately enough--the insane asylum. All the antics are intermittently funny, and it's somewhat refreshing to see the horrors of apartheid treated with rather less than the usual gravitas. Worth a read if you've got a special interest in South Africa or a soft spot for broad farce, otherwise not all that noteworthy

In many respects, apartheid South Africa provides a great setting for farces and satirical novels. Tom Sharpe ably exploits the possibilities in this tale involving an interracial affair, a bishop who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a murder investigation by irredeemably dumb and racist Afrikaner policemen.
Parts of Riotous assembly are very funny and Sharpe maintains the hectic pace of the narrative throughout. But in the end, I was disappointed with this book. My dissatisfaction had nothing to do with being an Afrikaner or with an aversion to dark humour. Carl Hiaasen is one of my favourite authors, and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie version of Sharpe's Wilt. My problem was with the characters, who seemed to have no personalities whatsoever beyond the stereotypes they represent. To truly enjoy a book (even a farce), I have to develop an interest in or establish some kind of rapport with the characters, and in the case of Riotous assembly this never happened.

A satirical leg-pull on one of Britains most august institutions, the Oxbridge College. All the pomp is there, the swan stuffed with widgeon, ageing dons clinging to their chairs with dead cold hands, gate porters who have more in common with east european secret police than with door men.

Within this stuffy and pompous world Sharpe sets a hilarious story. Gas filled condoms bobbing on the lawn, exploding chimneys, numerous haircuts on the one day. All the elements of a good farce are brought together to give a really good funny read. Not the funniest Sharpe novel, but definitely on form.

There's an out loud laugh a minute in this university life farce. The old verses the new, tradition and progress, black humor and farce abound..Some eccentric characters even by Brit standards, and written so well you'll breeze right through it! Also great descriptions, and you'll feel you're a casual witness to the academic shenanigans all the way through. My only criticism is some very serious situations (like a murderous fire) may be taken a bit too casually..Still, with a touch of class and bawdiness, this one is a real winner!

In the stuffy world of British academia, nothing changes -- that is, until Tom Sharpe decides to liven things up a bit with his tale of a crusading college Master who horrifies all his colleagues with his trendy left-leaning ideas.

Porterhouse College, Cambridge has been a bastion of privilege since time immemorial, turning out the kind of bluff nincompoops who have been running Britian for centuries and who do themselves so well at table that thee is a local version of an apoplectic fit, known as a Porterhouse Blue. The beneficiaries of this stultified atmosphere do not plan to give up their pampered lives easily, and oppose the Master with every devious scheme their dulled brains can come up with. Their machinations make for a typically enjoyable Sharpe romp, though without the savage anger which made his South African novels such page-turners

Of all Tom Sharpe's novels, _Porterhouse Blue_ is perhaps the least accessible. It helps to know something of Cambridge, Peterhouse in particular. Hugh Trevor-Roper, Lady Alexandra, Brian Wormald, and others make barely disguised appearances. Likewise does it help to know something of the Cambridge tripos system and the actual role of the colleges in undergraduate life. Helps to know something, that is, but not too much, as "true insiders" have told me it barely scratches the surface. Overall, funny and viciously satirical, but not Tom Sharpe at his best.

A hilarious tale of the strange world that one finds at a place like Cambridge. While one is almost tempted to say, 'yes, but it's actually fiction,' the truth is not far from Sharpe's tale of disaster and woe at this fictional Cambridge college.