Thomas Ridley Sharpe was an English satirical novelist. His father, the Reverend George Coverdale Sharpe, was chairman of the Acton and Ealing branch of The Link, and a member of the Nordic League. He declared that he hated Jews "in the sense that he hated all corruption". Sharpe initially shared some of his father's views but was horrified on seeing films of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Martin Levin, in a review of Porterhouse Blue, wrote that "Sharpe is one of England's funniest writers. He's in the tradition of the 19th-century satirist Thomas Love Peacock, who wrote novels of ideas laced with physical, slapstick farce." The Wilt Alternative is the second of Tom Sharpe's chronicles about Henry Wilt. For the Wilts have gone up in the world and, to suit their higher status, purchased a larger house, not least to be home to the four quadruplets Eva conceived and bore after going on fertility treatment between the last novel and this. And since there’s a spare room in the attic they let it out to a nice German au pair. Except that, as Wilt discovers when he takes her cash payment to the bank, the ‘au pair’, real name Gudrun Schautz, is one of the most wanted terrorists in Europe… In its core, The Wilt Alternative exposes the farcical anomalies, which have become the social norms of our time. Bitingly funny and brilliantly written! Listen online to free English audiobook "The Wilt Alternative” on our website to experience Tom Sharpe's novel.
