Product Description

Henry Wilt, tied to a daft job and a domineering wife, has just been passed over for promotion yet again. Ahead of him at the Polytechnic stretch years of trying to thump literature into the heads of plasterers, joiners, butchers and the like. And things are no better at home where his massive wife, Eva, is given to boundless and unpredictable fits of enthusiasm - for transcendental meditation, yoga or the trampoline. But if Wilt can do nothing about his job, he can do something about his wife, in imagination at least, and his fantasies grow daily more murderous and more concrete. After a peculiarly nasty experience at a party thrown by particularly nasty Americans, Wilt finds himself in several embarrassing positions: Eva stalks out in stratospheric dudgeon, and Wilt, under the inspiration of gin, puts one of his more vindictive fantasies into effect. But suspicions are instantly aroused and Wilt rapidly achieves an unenviable notoriety in the role of The Man Helping Police With Their Enquiries. Or is he exactly helping? Wilt's problem - although he's on the other side of the fence - is the same as Inspector Flint's: where is Eva Wilt? But Wilt begins to flourish in the heat of the investigation, and as the police stoke the flames of circumstantial evidence, Wilt deploys all his powers to show that the Law can't tell a Missing Person from a hole in the ground.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7205 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

Yorkshire Post
‘Abominably funny’

Auberon Waugh, Evening Standard
‘His best novel yet...Mr Sharpe has taken a great stride towards being considered a major craftsman in the art of farce’

About the Author
Tom Sharpe was born in 1928 and educated at Lancing College and Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did his National Service in the Marines before going 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, when he was deported... From 1963 to 1972 he was a lecturer in History at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. In 1986 he was awarded the XXXIIIeme Grand Prix de l'Humour Noir Xavier Forneret. He is married and lives in Cambridge.

Customer Reviews

Wilt by Tom Sharpe
I first read this book some twenty years ago on a train to London about to embark on my career in Higher Education. For the first time in my life I laughed out loud at a book. I sat on the train in public and could not help laughing at nearly every page, until tears streamed down my face. Tom Sharpes sartorial humour had not been surpassed since. Plumbers four, blow up dolls and further educationalists have never been the same since. Hugely funny.

Hilarious
Tom Sharpe is one of the funniest writers I have ever read, and I believe Wilt is his best work, though I have only read a few others. The story is fast-paced, the situation becoming funnier and funnier as the world tries to take down Wilt and he keeps on flourishing. When the story starts you think Wilt is going to be a sad man who could never outsmart anyone, but we see him triumph in the face of disaster. The supporting characters are believabe and you end up loving them all.

A tremendous book that everyone should read at least once.

Laughs all the way in this fable of a man of the seventies.
Readers of Wilt today will be amazed at just how "unknowing" the seventies Briton actually was. Wilt's mundane technical college existence (teaching day release gas fitters the joys of Lord of the Flies), is severely shaken when he stands accused of murdering his wife, an action which has dominated his fantasies for a number of years. Complete with a rogue's gallery of grotesque comic creations, this book will make even the most sober-sided of readers laugh out load. Enjoy, and pay attention to the wisdom of Dr. Board.