Wilt - Couverture rigide

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 XXIIIème 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.

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

"This delightful book ... lives, rises and triumphs by a slicing wit" (Daily Mirror)

"Superb farce ... If you don't laugh your head off, Crippen wasn't guilty" (Tribune)

"Mr. Sharpe's farce has a gritty satirical edge to it, and the world his embattled central character inhabits is all too real" (Sunday Times)

"Tom Sharpe piles slapstick upon slapstick with the ingenious dexterity of a music-hall illusionist" (Sunday Telegraph)