Riotous Assembly [Versión Kindle]

This is political farce with a vengeance. The back jacket on the paperback says this book is not a political book in any imagined sense of that term and that's essentially true. The author's position on the old South African regime is pretty clear from the word "go" but it never dampens the fun.

The book is so over the top that its characters come off as cardboard cutouts of a caricature--yet, somehow, Sharpe still finds a way to imbue them with enough connective personality that we are drawn into the farce willingly. The book is extremely funny--I laughed out loud at least twenty times. It is a rather crude undertaking--but then again, so was the old South Africa, and this books achieves the unique aspect of being extremely sexually explicit while never actually rendering an actual sex scene--not for want of trying on the "heroines" part.

All in all a lot of fun is the crudity and explicitness don't put you off. If that's the case, seek humor elsewhere.

I enjoyed it enough that I have ordered another couple of Sharpe's books to see if they are as good. I have high hopes on that score.

If you're ever in the mood for a hugely over-the-top farce about apartheid-era South Africa, well, this is the book for you. Sharpe spent a decade there before being deported as a subversive, and after reading this unrestrained comic pummeling of the RSA, one can only wonder why it took the authorities so long to give him the boot. Indeed authority is target number one in this fast-paced story set in the small city of Piemburg. It all starts when an elderly semi-aristocratic Englishwoman calls the police to report that she's shot her Zulu cook. Refusing police Kommandant van Heerden's best attempts to cover up the matter, she reveals that the cook was also her lover, which so appalls him that he immediately declares a state of emergency and mobilizes the entire police force. And so begins a massive comedy of errors, in which a "Kaffir-Killer" Konstabel Els plays a large role, as does the slimy Luitenant Veerkamp, and matters take a turn for the utterly bizarre, as rubber fetishes, bondage, a drunken bishop, porno films, cross dressing, and penile novocain injections are all introduced to the plot. As one might surmise from such a litany, the plot spins ever more wildly out of control until events come to a head at--appropriately enough--the insane asylum. All the antics are intermittently funny, and it's somewhat refreshing to see the horrors of apartheid treated with rather less than the usual gravitas. Worth a read if you've got a special interest in South Africa or a soft spot for broad farce, otherwise not all that noteworthy

This is the first of Tom Sharpe's two novels set in South Africa. This is a very funny book. It is very perverse and zany fun.

The book begins with the murder of a black house wroker by a member of a prominent English family in the city of Piemburg. Enter the police. There is Kommandant van Heerden, who wants nothing more than to be English, Konstabel Els, who is renowned as a killer of blacks, and Luitenant Veerkramp, who is one of the slimiest and wiliest characters in the Piemburg police force. A routine police investigation turns into an armed confrontation between the unwitting members of the Piemburg police force, while van Heerden is unwillingly seduced by the murderer he is investigating. These are just a few of the hijinks that ensue as the police's irrational actions keep making the situation worse.

This book is excellent because Sharpe is able to expose the irrationality of apartheid and the actions of the authorities to keep this practice going. After reading this book, there is little wonder in my mind why Sharpe was expelled from South Africa in the '70s.