Product Description

Moist von Lipwig is a con artist...and a fraud and a man faced with a life choice: be hanged, or put Ankh-Morpork's ailing postal service back on its feet. It's a tough decision. But he's got to see that the mail gets through, come rain, hail, sleet, dogs, the Post Office Workers' Friendly and Benevolent Society, the evil chairman of the Grand Trunk Semaphore Company, and a midnight killer. Getting a date with Adora Bell Dearheart would be nice, too...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3069 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-01
• Released on: 2005-09-26
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 429 pages

Review
A satirist of enormous talent' THE TIMES.

Pratchett satirizes the modern telecom business in a deeply satisfying comedy about a man sent to a fate worse than death: the post office. Fans of Pratchett's Discworld series will be happy he's returning to the city of Ankh-Morpork-after the Balkan War-esque madness of Monstrous Regiment (2003)-though it's not to the familiar environs of the Watch or Unseen University. This time, Moist Von Lipwig, a scam artist with a host of aliases, has just been hanged for his crimes-except that he hasn't, due to some trickery with the rope. It seems that the Duke wants a man everybody thinks is dead to take over the city's long-moribund post office. That's no easy task, what with only two employees left, both pretty much insane, puttering around the massive, dead-letter-stuffed edifice, not to mention the competition with the clacks towers. Pratchett follows Moist's attempts to resuscitate regular mail service as he goes up against the evil hegemony of corporate toadies running the clacks towers, a once-impressive series of semaphore towers that, when they work, can send a message hundreds of miles in no time at all, but at a hefty price. With the exception of a few heavy-handed statements about the public good versus private profit, Pratchett slides the satire in around the edges of the primary action: watching a career criminal transitioning rather quickly to earnest civic flunky, all under the watchful (glowing red) eyes of a monstrously powerful and patient government-employed golem. Although Moist seems a little too eager to leave his bad ways behind, it's almost shamefully enjoyable to watch him restore the mail routes, invent the idea of stamps, and go toe-to-toe with everything from rapacious businessmen to bloodthirsty banshees as he shows how to deliver letters over 40 years late. Sharp-edged humor-and wonderfully executed. (Kirkus Reviews)

Guardian
'This darkness and concrete morality sets his work apart from imitators of his English Absurd school of comic fantasy.'

Financial Times
'Pratchett...is the missing link between Douglas Adams and J.K. Rowling...Wit and imagination have gained him a fanatical readership.'

Customer Reviews

Heir to Wodehouse and Waugh
Anybody who thinks Pratchett is a lightweight populist should read the first chapter of Going Postal. It's a tour de force from somebody who I consider to be one of the great humorous writers, combining the ability of P G Wodehouse to draw sympathetic characters with the darker edges that you would find in Evelyn Waugh's novels. To write a chapter like this, which centres around an execution, requires skill of a high order.

Ankh-Morpork is one of the fictional universes I like to retreat to, along with Blandings Castle and McCall Smith's Gaborone; the characters have human flaws, various unpleasant things happen, but somehow you finish up feeling comfortable in the world that Pratchett paints and care about what happens to the characters.

Excellent
It seems to me that nothing Terry Pratchett writes can be bad. Every time I read another of his books, I say, 'No, that one was the best I've ever read'. He disguises his excellent observations on our everyday life and our history in a comic fantasy world and it works *so* well. The ones where he tackles every day institutions such as the post office are the best, in my opinion. This is a great book.

(audio cd .) just ok really
I think there must be an awful lot missed out in these audio books. Although I listen to them several times and 'get it' I dont find them very fullfilling somehow.
Perhaps I ought to try reading the books instead