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Something Rotten

On sale

11th April 2005

Price: £9.99

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Selected: Paperback / ISBN-13: 9780340825952

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The fourth book in the ingenious Thursday Next series, from Number One bestselling author Jasper Fforde.

‘Don’t ask, just read it. Fforde is a true original’ – Sunday Express on Lost in a Good Book

Thursday Next, Head of JurisFiction and ex-SpecOps agent, returns to her native Swindon accompanied by a child of two, a pair of dodos and Hamlet, who is on a fact-finding mission in the real world. Thursday has been despatched to capture escaped Fictioneer Yorrick Kaine but even so, now seems as good a time as any to retrieve her husband Landen from his state of eradication at the hands of the Chronoguard.

It’s not going to be easy. Thursday’s former colleagues at the department of Literary Detectives want her to investigate a spate of cloned Shakespeares, the Goliath Corporation are planning to switch to a new Faith based corporate management system and the Neanderthals feel she might be the Chosen One who will lead them to genetic self-determination.

With help from Hamlet, her uncle and time-travelling father, Thursday faces the toughest adventure of her career. Where is the missing President-for-life George Formby? Why is it imperative for the Swindon Mallets to win the World Croquet League final? And why is it so difficult to find reliable childcare?

Reviews

<i>Sunday Express</i>
Don't ask. Just read it. Fforde is a true original.
'Jasper Fforde's imagination is a literary volcano in full spate . . . SOMETHING ROTTEN is arguably Fforde's best book yet . . . Fforde has a knack of creating memorable characters whom the reader greets like long-lost friends . . . Buy it; chuckles guaranteed.' - Independent
Express
the best yet, which is quite remarkable considering how good the others were.
Terry Pratchett on The Eyre Affair
Ingenious - I'll watch Jasper Fforde nervously
<i>Independent</i>
Jasper Fforde's imagination is a literary volcano in full spate . . . SOMETHING ROTTEN is arguably Fforde's best book yet . . . Fforde has a knack of creating memorable characters whom the reader greets like long-lost friends . . . Buy it; chuckles guaranteed.
Poisoned Pen
Amazing . . . Fforde's literary invention and playfulness is unique
<i>Guardian</i>
Jasper Fforde has gone where no fictioneer has gone before. Millions of readers now follow ... Thank you, Jasper
'a wild rush of outrageous notions and silly jokes and leaves you feeling pleasantly tipsy' - People Magazine
Daily Express
Very clever, very imaginative and very funny
<i>Sunday Express</i>
The best yet, which is quite remarkable considering how good the others were.
<i>Herts & Essex Observer
Phew...Jasper Fforde has done it again...the author has now written a sparkling, stimulating and downright hilarious series...Jasper Fforde is a true original, as are the people who populate his world.
<i>War Correspondent - the Journal of the Crimean War Research Society</i>
'The complexity of the plotting is le Carre-like in its ingenuity; the back-story detailing is Dickensian both in its vividness and in its depth; Umberto Eco would recognise an erudition that challenges his own (and far surpasses that of the hugely-overrated Dan Brown), and Orwell would have been proud of the persuasiveness of the depictions of the evil influence of multinational conglomerates, as exemplified by the Goliath Corporation, and of the inescapable misery and squalor of totalitarian communism as evinced by the Socialist Republic of Wales (national motto: "Not Always Raining"). One has to consider Jasper Fforde in the context of his predecessors in surreal comic fantasy - Lewis Carroll, Thorne Smith, the Goons, the Monty Python team, Douglas Adams, Robert Rankin, Terry Pratchett and the rest - and in many ways he not only matches their genius, but actually transcends it.'