He didn’t write “just” the Flat Earth. He wasn’t “just” a draw at various cons and other fantasy fan events. He wasn’t “just” a brilliant writer. Rob Wilkins, Terry Pratchett’s personal assistant and trustee of his literary estate, now tells the story of his ex-boss’s life hidden in notes completed before Pratchett’s death in 2015.
Island fantasy mage Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was a writer who made fantasy literature popular with readers around the world. The holder of the Order of the British Empire created the mythical Earth. The series about a fictional country includes forty books, dozens of short stories, maps and cookbooks from the world that lies on the back of the giant turtle A’tuin. Here, for a change, are supported by four elephants. | Profimedia
Terry Pratchett was an extremely prolific author. Forty-one stories were created from Earthland alone, he usually wrote two, sometimes even three books a year. But he never finished one – his own biography. In 2015, when he was definitively overcome by a degenerative brain disease, he managed to dictate some 24,000 words to his personal assistant, Rob Wilkins, and they reached 1979. It was up to Wilkins. The result of his several years of work is an entertaining and sometimes rather painful intimate look at the famous writer, interspersed with personal observations and experiences. It is not unbridled glorification, and Terry Pratchett comes out of the book as a person who excelled at many things – from beekeeping and mead-making to gardening to haggling and blackmailing people. But most of all, the pages exude the impression of a person who truly loved what he was doing.
The book in an excellent translation by Tomáš Jeník and an equally excellent audiobook performed by the actor Jan Vondráček (he also read Pratchett’s books Těžké melodično or Sekáč ze zeméplosské series) under the direction of Hynek Pekárek, offer even non-fans a revelation of the writing process. They reveal how much work goes behind the pages of books that millions of people enjoy. We also learn how Pratchett inconspicuously and slowly stepped into the big world of recognized authors, how he lived before he published the first Earthquake story. How he started in a house without electricity.
The Amazing Discworld, originally Discworld, is Terry Pratchett’s lifelong and comprehensive work. The first book was published in 1983 and the last in 2015. So Sir Terry Pratchett has been creating his main work for an incredible 32 years! It’s a humorous fantasy parodying our world. Terry Pratchett was not afraid, as is the custom of British humor, to make fun of anything. | AR, Josh Kirby
The text flows at a pleasant pace, non-violently, and he presents the facts in an engaging manner. In the audiobook version, Vondráček does not insist, he does not exaggerate, he unfolds the threads of the biography matter-of-factly and at the same time with pleasant dedication. That’s it on the pages of the book and in the headphones, he becomes the voice of Pratchett, not the dull exposition that biographies sometimes are. The book reveals a lot, except for spoilers and plots of Pratchett’s books, so that even those who are just starting to discover them are not deprived of surprises and magical details of the characters. Brings closer the author’s collaboration and meeting with famous colleagues, JK Rowling and Neil Gaiman, with whom he had a strong friendship. But it also opens sad chapters, from the first pronouncement of the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease to its late symptoms, which did not allow Terry to create as much as he would still like.
Listen to a sample of the audiobook version:
Terry Pratchett: A Life in the Footnotes by Rob Wilkins, who manages not only the writer’s foundation side by side with Terry’s daughter Rijana, is an exceptional handshake with the author of “the world’s most humorous fantasy”. Wilkins also manages the independent production company Narrativia, among others. Under her leadership, the popular series adaptation of Good Omens (2019–2023), stories written together with Neil Gaiman, was created. And above all, he continues to monitor all the notes and notes (below the line) so that Pratchett’s breathtaking story does not disappear. Capture him too, get to know the life of a man who can make you laugh regardless of his presence, time and continent.
Rating: 98%
Rob Wilkins
Terry Pratchett: A Life in the Footnotes
Publisher: Argo, 2023 • Number of pages: 416 • Audiobook: OneHotBook, 2023 • Performer: Jan Vondráček • Director: Hynek Pekárek • Recording length: 17 hours 52 minutes.
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