Unseen Academicals
(Discworld Novel 37)
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- €6.99
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- €6.99
Publisher Description
'We play and are played and the best we can hope for is to do it with style.'
Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork. And now the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match without using magic . . . so they're in the mood for trying everything else.
To do this, they recruit an unlikely group of players: Trev, a street urchin with a talent for kicking a tin can; Glenda, the night chef who makes a mean pie; Juliet, the kitchen hand turned world's greatest fashion model; and the mysterious Mr Nutt, who has something powerful, and dark, locked away inside him . . .
And the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football. Here we go, here we go, here we go!
'This isn't just football, it's Discworld football. Or, to borrow another phrase, it's about life, the Universe and everything' The Times
'No one mixes the fantastical and mundane to better comic effect' Daily Mail
Unseen Academicals is the seventh book in the Wizards series, but you can read the Discworld novels in any order.
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.
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