Night Watch: (Penguin Modern Classics)

A definitive annotated edition of one of the greatest of Terry Pratchett's multi-million-bestselling Discworld novels Commander Sam Vimes of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch is in hot pursuit of a serial killer. The trouble is, a well-timed lightning strike has thrown both policeman and pursued into the city's past. Now Vimes must relive the history that made him- a cruel regime, a bloody revolution, a corrupt police force, and, most unnerving of all, a keen young recruit named Sam Vimes... Night Watch, which draws on inspirations as far ranging as Victor Hugo and M*A*S*H, is a keen satire about the true nature of political power, and the sacrifices made in the name of the greater good; but also a profoundly empathetic novel about community, connection and the tenacity of the human spirit. Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels are among the most successful and influential fantasy titles of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. This edition of Night Watch - written at the height of Pratchett's imaginative powers - includes a new foreword by Rob Wilkins and an introduction and annotations by Dr David Lloyd and Dr Darryl Jones, contextualising the novel and Pratchett's far-reaching legacy for new readers and current fans alike. 'A master storyteller' - A.S. Byatt

About the Author :
Terry Pratchett (Author) Terry Pratchett was the acclaimed creator of the global bestselling Discworld series, the first of which, The Colour of Magic, was published in 1983. In all, he was the author of over fifty bestselling books which have sold over 100 million copies worldwide. His novels have been widely adapted for stage and screen, and he was the winner of multiple prizes, including the Carnegie Medal. He was awarded a knighthood for services to literature in 2009, although he always wryly maintained that his greatest service to literature was to avoid writing any. www.terrypratchettbooks.com Rob Wilkins (Foreword By) Rob Wilkins worked with Terry Pratchett for more than twenty years, first as his personal assistant and later as his business manager. He now manages the Pratchett literary estate and Terry's production company, Narrativia.

Review :
Compulsively readable. . . . Like Jonathan Swift, Pratchett uses his other world to hold up a distorting mirror to our own, and like Swift he is a satirist of enormous talent. He shares with Aristophanes a sense of the comedian’s mission to teach, and with Sophocles a concern to examine the rule of law versus the rights of the individual Night Watch can hold its own with the best of the Victorians and it beats the hell out of Bukowski. It has profound moral complexity, hard emotional impact, careful plotting, gritty political insight and, best of all, raw, urgent humanity In Night Watch, Vimes finds himself - along with a peculiarly unpleasant criminal called Carcer - caught in a time-warp, back in his own early days as a Watchman, trying to change the course of a bloody revolution. He is also concerned to prevent his own callow self as a lance-constable from getting killed, so that he may get back to the present and his child may be born. He has become a dead hero called John Keel, who helped to organise the barricades, but was also a Watch captain at Cable Street. His opponents include the corrupt Unmentionables, who arrest and torture people… [A] master storyteller… He is, of course, writing about us Both comic and dark, blending high fantasy, twisted storytelling and all manner of wordplay... a fine place to start reading Pratchett The book’s rapid cinematic pace - quick cutting, multiple plot lines converging - never flags . . . [Pratchett’s] using his wit and brilliant talent for characterization to attack every kind of intolerance . . . Night Watch turns out of be an unexpectedly moving novel about sacrifice and responsibility, its final scences leaving one near tears. . . Terry Pratchett may still be pegged as a comic novelist, but as Night Watch shows, he’s a lot more