Product Description

The wizards at Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University are renowned for many things—wisdom, magic, and their love of teatime—but athletics is most assuredly not on the list. And so when Lord Ventinari, the city's benevolent tyrant, strongly suggests to Archchancellor Mustrum Ridcully that the university revive an erstwhile tradition and once again put forth a football team composed of faculty, students, and staff, the wizards of UU find themselves in a quandary. To begin with, they have to figure out just what it is that makes this sport—soccer with a bit of rugby thrown in—so popular with Ankh-Morporkians of all ages and social strata. Then they have to learn how to play it. Oh, and on top of that, they must win a football match without using magic.

Meanwhile, Trev (a handsome street urchin and a right good kicker) falls hard for kitchen maid Juliet (beautiful, dim, and perhaps the greatest fashion model there ever was), and Juliet's best pal, UU night cook Glenda (homely, sensible, and a baker of jolly good pies) befriends the mysterious Mr. Nutt (about whom no one knows very much, including Mr. Nutt, which is worrisome . . .). As the big match approaches, these four lives are entangled and changed forever. Because the thing about football—the most important thing about football­—is that it is never just about football.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #277 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-01
• Released on: 2009-10-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780061161704
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Publishers Weekly
Football, food, fashion and wizards collide in Pratchett's 37th Discworld novel (after 2007's Making Money), an affectionate satire on the foibles of sports and sports fans. The always out-of-touch wizards at Ankh-Morpork's Unseen University stand to lose a very big bequest unless they enter a team in a violent but popular street sport competition. As the wizards struggle to learn the game, aided by the university's hired help, Ankh-Morpork's ruler schemes to use the competition for his own purposes. Though the book suffers from a few awkward moments (Pratchett's attempts to discuss racism through the strained relationships of dwarves, humans and goblins fall particularly flat), the prose crackles with wit and charm, and the sendups of league football, academic posturing, Romeo and Juliet and cheesy sports dramas are razor sharp and hilarious but never cruel. At its heart, this is an intelligent, cheeky love letter to football, its fans and the unifying power of sports. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com Reviewed by by David Kirby Terry Pratchett's new novel begins with a gigantic bird bounding down a university corridor "making the flat honking noise of the sort duck hunters make just before they are shot by other duck hunters." This bird is pursued by senior faculty, otherwise known as "wizards," each of whom is carried piggyback by a bowler-hatted porter urged on by a bottle of beer dangling from a stick. Does this sound like your alma mater? And did your professors catch what turns out to be, in this case, a creature called a Megapode? Neither question really matters in Discworld, where bestseller Pratchett has set dozens of previous novels. This fantastical place rests on the backs of four elephants that stand on the back of a turtle that stands on -- oh, never mind. Unseen University will receive a substantial bequest if it forms a team to play the game of "foot-the-ball or Poore Boys' Funne." As academicals, though, they don't really know what they're doing. Worse, their football team has to be composed not only of students but faculty as well. Worse still, the Unseens have to play an especially nasty group of townies, and they're not allowed to use magic on the thugs. Wordplay abounds in Pratchett's prose (a busman asks a forgetful passenger, "My fare, lady?"), and his faux-medieval dialogue sounds like it came straight from Sir Walter Scott's trash can, as when one character cries, "I am the Archchancellor of this college, by lo, and I will rusticate, or otherwise expel, any man who skives off without a note from his mother, hah!" A mash-up of "Harry Potter" and "Monty Python," "Unseen Academicals" thrums with excess energy, and that's before the game even begins. Do the wizards of Unseen U. stand a chance against the tough guys from town? Of course: The sports story wouldn't exist if underdogs didn't usually win a moral victory and occasionally a real one. What does it matter if the wizard strategists are prone to statements like: "Now let us consider this in the light, as it were, of the speeding ball. Where it has come from we believe we know; but where it will land is an ever-changing conundrum, even if only considered in four-dimensional space." That professors are impractical, though, is rather old information. It's said that Einstein couldn't remember where he parked his car, but isn't it more important that he came up with the special theory of relativity? The stylistic razzle-dazzle notwithstanding, rehashing a cliche gets tiresome because whether it's a game or a novel, fans want to be surprised. bookworld@washpost.com
Copyright 2009, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

Review
Terry Pratchett is a comic genius. Daily Express

Customer Reviews

Pratchett scores again
Mr Pratchett has used many of his novels to give a comic fantasy twist to many subjects ranging from Banking, movie making to newspapers. Here he turns his hand to blending football into the Discworld. And the football here is the British Soccer, not football as understood by you chaps in the US.

I have been with the Discworld novels since the very beginning, way before the author turned into a phenomenon and then an official National British Treasure. Recently his much discussed illness has perhaps made us appreciate his genius even more. Now, a slight confession, although I was there from the start, I kind of lost my way about Hogfather - maybe it was my age or my tastes changed, but suddenly the books weren't doing it for me and since Hogfather I have only been dipping in and out of the occasional one.

But I love football and was keen to see how Terry Pratchett would morph our beautiful game into a Discworld version! And would the classic humour and clever writing be there as I remembered it from the days of avid reading. In short, yes.

In essence, the wizards of the Unseen University have to win a football match. And they are not allowed to use magic. So they resort to bringing in some players many of whom, in typical Pratchett fashion, are not quite what they seem. But although there are many amusing digs at the football culture, football and the challenge match are just the framework in which the author places interesting characters and very funny interplay. And there comes a point where you realise that actually this book might be about something that is nothing to do with football as we also get a gentle love story and comments on such maters as diverse as discrimination and fashion!
Knowledge of 'soccer' is not required to appreciate this, but there are two elements of British culture that may be worth explaining. Firstly British football is very tribal and who you support and intense rivalries that can border on hate, are part of the culture. Also part of the culture are the stadium pies. These are no culinary delights but are a stadium tradition, you eat them without asking too many questions - nobody expects decent quality food at a football ground in the UK. These are running themes in the book so worth mentioning for background.
Also towards the end the chapters have titles such as "They think it's all over" and "It is now"...this is from a famous TV commentary from 1966 when England won the World Cup.
It's astonishing that an author who is suffering with a serious illness can still produce such high quality stuff. The word genius was never more appropriate.

In which the Unseen University embraces its athletics department
Lord Vetinari decides it is time to treat football (soccer to Americans) like crime; if you are going to have it, it should be organized. Ponder Stibbons learns the power of managing the agenda and mastering tradition. Ankh-Morpork finds the Disc's first super-model, and tries to figure out exactly why this should matter to anyone. The power of pie is explored. More insinuations, inuendo, and hints as to the relationship between Lord Vetinari and a mature lady from Überwald. And Mr. Nutt is introduced and acquires worth. Along with the usual cultural literacy exam.

Again, Terry Pratchett has outdone himself. "Unseen Academicals" is a brilliant and complex story with many threads beautifully woven together. The lives of the most powerful people in Ankh-Morpork intersect with the lives of the most humble on the Disc.

Cooks, candlemakers, and the fans and players of foot-the-ball of the neighborhoods of Ankh-Morpork find their lives turned upside down when the Wizards of U.U. find they must play soccer, or limit themselves to only three meals a day. And behind this, a humble and hard working... man, Nutt is trying to gain worth, earn respect, and make friends, none of which come naturally to him. Old characters return, one having substituted 'x' for 'cks', new characters abound. References to Shakespeare and pop culture (for lack of a better word) collide.

I loved it. I read it in a day, and am re-reading it to pick up on the magnificent detail and hints that will only make sense as the story draws to a close. My biggest regret is that "Unseen Academicals" arrived to quickly ending the anticipation, and it will be too long before the next Pratchett book.

E. M. Van Court

are some people misreading this book?
Before I purchased this book I read some of the reviews here and some of them distressed me a little.

After actually reading the book I am a bit puzzled at some of the charges that Alzheimer's is at the heart of a poor book. WTF? This was one of the more complex Discworld books to date, perhaps not as light and fluffy as some would hope, but very dense and meaningful. Yes, football seems to be what the book is about, but that is, excuse me, a very facile interpretation of the story, which IS about prejudice, finding meaning in life, love, friendship, the interaction of social classes, and so much more, football is merely the foil upon which part of the book plays out against. This is a discworld book that follows several narratives until they reduce down to one. It is one of the more challenging discworld books in it story telling, and rewards faithful reading of the series with all manners of small insights into formerly minor (and major) characters.

Those that blame Alzheimer's for a book they don't like are on the wrong track, it is fine to not like the book, it took me longer to engage with this book than many other discworld books, but the not liking is a personal preference and not the result of the disease.

Once I adjusted to the flow and style of the book I was pulled further and further in and by the end it ranks near the top of discworld books ever for me.

It is good, nay.. it is great.