Indecent Exposure - Softcover

Sharpe, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 009946652X ISBN 13: 9780099466529

Publisher: Arrow, 2004

Synopsis

Indecent Exposure

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Indecent Exposure, Tom Sharpe's second South African novel, is a brilliant follow-up to his Riotous Assembly, which the Sunday Mirror called, "One of the most savagely hilarious satires ever, a startlingly original first novel." Once again the setting is Piemburg, the deceptively peaceful looking capital of Zululand, where Kommandant van Heerden, Konstabel Els and Luitenant Verkramp continue to terrorize true Englishmen and even truer Zulus in their relentless search for a perfect South Africa.

While Kommandant van Heerden gropes his way towards 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; their efforts are rewarded by remarkable and quite unforeseen results. Meanwhile, the Kommandant, riding to hounds 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.

And if you've ever wondered why Tom Sharpe, as a young man, was deported from South Africa (but not before enjoying its unique prisons), you need only read Indecent Exposure and its companion, Riotous Assembly.

"Sharpe is far more satisfying than Kingsley Amis or any other nasty Brit novelists since Evelyn Waugh."--Roy Blount, Jr.

"His description of the stupidity and brutality of the South African police-in Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure-remains one of the funniest passages in modern fiction."--Auberon Waugh

"The funniest writer now working in the English language.... His humor has bite and an angry underside that puts him in the great tradition of the English satirists."--Stephen King

"I cannot think of anyone except Peter DeVries who has anything like his background and charm of style."--Robertson Davies

"The funniest novelist in English today."--The Washington Post Book World

"Tom Sharpe is the funniest novelist writing today."--The Times (London)

"A master of the British comic tradition, as savvy and savage as Evelyn Waugh... as dazzlingly inventive and bizarrely original as P.G. Wodehouse."--Detroit News

"Like all good humorists, Sharpe is serious and his observations are disturbingly close to truth. Unequivocally the best thing to happen to English comic prose since Wodehouse died and Waugh got religion."--The Plain Dealer

"He's a desperately funny writer.... Something has driven him to the very boundaries of good taste in vocabulary and fictional event. His fiction is by turns ribald, farcical, satiric, silly, raucous, preposterous, political, irreverent, and wonderful-it succeeds through excess, suggesting a coarser Evelyn Waugh or P.G. Wodehouse leavened by Monty Python."--The Christian Science Monitor

"Imagine a comic novel that sounds as if it came from the same source as Monty Python, Benny Hill, Fawlty Towers, and the early films of Peter Sellers...."--The Washington Post

Tom Sharpe was born in England in 1928 and educated at Cambridge. He emigrated to South Africa in 1951, but was deported in 1961. From 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in history at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. He is the author of eight other novels and two non-fiction books, Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure, about South Africa. He is married and lives in Cambridge.

From Publishers Weekly:

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.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Arrow
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 009946652X
• ISBN 13: 9780099466529
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352