Tom Sharpe

Indecent exposure

In this, the second of Tom Sharpe's chronicles about Henry Wilt, our hero is no longer the victim of his own uncontrolled fantasies. As Head of a reconstituted Liberal Studies Department he has assumed power without authority at the Fenland College of Arts & Technology and the fantasies he now confronts are those of political bigots and reactionary bureaucrats- in addition to his wife's enthusiasm for every Organic Alternative under the compost heap and the insistence of his quadruplets on looking at every problem with an unflinching lack of sentimentality.

Wilt is given to elaborate and vindictive fantasies about his wife, the massive, domineering Eva. But when Eva becomes a Missing Person, following an embarrassing incident at a party they both attend, the police want to question Wilt.

"Henry Wilt, Tom Sharpe's beleaguered hero, returns again for another hilarious dose of quickfire farce. Stuck in a job he doesn't want -- but can't afford to lose -- as nominal Head of the Communications Department at Fenland University, Wilt is still subject to the whims of 'The Powers That Be', both in and outside of work. The demands of his snobbish wife Eva, and the stupendous school fees of his despicable quadruplet daughters, cause him the biggest headaches ... apart from the hangovers, that is. When Eva signs him up for a summer job, teaching the gun-toting idiot son of a lusty local aristocrat, Wilt is not amused. But, as circumstances unravel and the summer goes on, Wilt sees that the situation could be put to his financial advantage, as well as giving Eva some headaches of her own. With Tom Sharpe's famous dark humour in full evidence, and an explosive plot which takes its readers to places they never realised they wanted to visit, The Wilt Inheritance is another instant classic from the British master of farce."--Fantastic fiction website.