Tom Sharpe Wilt in Nowhere The funniest novelist writing today
The Times
Published by Arrow Books in 2005
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Copyright Tom Sharpe, 2004
The right of Tom Sharpe to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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Henry Wilt is back!
One of Britain's finest living writers returns with his greatest creation.
'Tom Sharpe is back and he's on cracking form'
Daily Mail
'One of the most widely enjoyed comic writers in Britain... his position at the heart of British comedy is as assured as that of the seaside postcard'
Observer
'Our funniest living novelist'
Daily Telegraph
'Reaches a transcendental realm of its own. I couldn't even read at times, because I was crying and choking with laughter'
Daily Express
'Sharpe is funniest novelist currently writing...
I sat curled up with laughter'
Time Out
FICTION
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In Tom Sharpe's fourth uproarious Wilt novel, the indefatigable Henry Wilt embarks on the voyage of a lifetime -- a cross-country trip through England, without map or compass, carrying little more than a backpack and the boots on his feet. A week later sees him drunk and unconscious in the back of an arsonist's pickup truck. His trip goes even further downhill from there until he revives in the hospital, unable to figure out how he could possibly stand accused of arson, assassination and robbery.
Meanwhile, Eva has taken the quads to visit Uncle Wally and Aunt Joan in Tennessee. With the four girls leaving their customary trail of insanity and destruction wherever they go, not to mention a mob of embittered drug enforcement agents, Eva's journey has also spiralled out of control.
Bitingly funny, Wilt in Nowhere pits Wilt against the intricacies of police persecution and the underbelly of Britain's medical facilities, brilliantly exposing the farcical realities of small-town England and America.
God, what a day,' said Wilt as he and Peter Braintreę sat in the garden of the Duck and Dragon with their beers and watched a lone oarsman scull down the river. It was summer and the evening sun glinted on the water. 'After that bloody Entitlement meeting I had to tell Johnson and Miss Flour they've been made redundant because of the financial cuts, and then after I was told that the Computer Department is going to do next year's time-table and I don't have to bother, the Vice-Principal sends a memo to say there's a glitch in the programme or something and I've had to do it myself.'
'You'd think the one thing a computer would be good at was sorting classes and putting them in the right rooms.
All it requires is logic,' said Braintree, Head of English.
'Logic, my foot. Try using logic with Mrs Robbins who won't teach in Room 156 because Laurence Seaforth is next door in 155 and she can't make herself heard for the din his drama class makes. And Seaforth won't move because he's used 155 for ten solid years and the acoustics are just right for declaiming "To be or not to be" or Henry V's speech at Agincourt in multi-decibels. Try getting a computer to take that into account.'
'It's the human factor. I've had the same sort of trouble