Fragments d'inexistència

Tom Sharpe once said: "My biography is so extravagant that it probably explains the kind of books I write." Based on the abundant documentary legacy that the writer left behind after his death, this biography delves into the life of a 20th century genius of British literary humor. The work begins with the author's childhood -the son of a reverend Anglican supporter of Nazism- and covers the arduous passage through various schools, the discovery of sexuality and fetishism, entry into the Royal Marines and the academic world of Cambridge. Then come the momentous years in South Africa, where he was a teacher, photographer, and anti-apartheid activist. The situations he lived there -including jail- launched his literary creativity as a way of responding to the injustices he witnessed, until consecrating himself as a writer with the emblematic Wilt and his hilarious misadventures. The book also talks about the long years of blockade he had to deal with, the heart attack he suffered, the discovery of Llafranc, which would become his refuge and paradise... Sharpe defined himself as a "man with the mind of a grasshopper ", who jumped from one subject to another and broke the laws of logic. This biography helps to understand not only his contradictions and his effervescent personality, but also how sarcasm was a defense weapon for him against the madness of the world.