Indecent Exposure
By (Author) Tom Sharpe
Cornerstone
Arrow Books Ltd
1st June 2004
1st April 2004
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
Humorous fiction
Satirical fiction and parodies
Crime and mystery: cosy mystery
Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary
823.914
Paperback
352
Width 130mm, Height 198mm, Spine 22mm
249g
Once again the setting is Piemburgem, the deceptively peaceful-looking capital of Zululand, where Kommandant van Heerden, Konstabel Els and Luitenant Vekramp continue to terrorise true Englishman and even truer Zulus in their relentless search for a perfect South Africa. While that great Anglophile, Kommandant van Heerden, gropes his way towards attaining true 'Englishness' in the company of the eccentric Dornford Yates Club, Luitenant Verkramp, whose hatred of all things English is surpassed only by his fear of sex, sets in motion an experiment in mass chastity, with the help of the redoubtable lady psychiatrist Dr von Blimenstein, which has remarkable and quite unforeseen results. The Kommandant, hunting the fox in the Aardvark mountains, succumbs to the bizarre charms of Mrs Heathcote-Kilkoon, as Luitenant Verkramp's essays in counter-espionage backfire in the bird sanctuary. Once more, Konstabel Els, homicidal to the last, saves the day - or what's left of it - in one of the most savage hunts ever chronicled in fiction.
Explosively funny, fiendishly inventive * Sunday Times *
Splendidly funny * New Statesman *
What clinches the novel's success is Mr Sharpe's brilliant comic style. His phrasing, his timing, and his extraordinarily deft handling of the minutiae of comic incidents make for real hilarity * Times Literary Supplement *
Britain's leading practitioner of black humour * Punch *
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 XXIIIeme 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.