The Truth. The 25th. Discworld Novel. [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

The Truth is Terry Pratchett's 25th novel about Discworld in general and the dirt-encrusted metropolis of Ankh-Morpork in particular--home of the sinister Patrician, the Unseen University of magicians and guilds for everything from Assassins to Thieves, taking in Clowns (but not mimes) along the way. Ankh-Morpork has weathered several influxes of technology in its time--a demon-inspired invention of the movies, the brief fad for Music with Rocks in it--and now it has acquired a free press, dedicated newshounds, dwarf printers with not especially nasty tempers (for dwarves), and people who want to see their amusing vegetables in the "On a Lighter Note" section. The business of politics (attempts by the old aristocracy to unseat the Patrician) is ratcheted up a notch and Vimes, of the City Watch, is in a worse temper than usual. William de Worde, editor, reporter and investigator, is another attractive Pratchett hero, captured for us in the middle of wonderfully parodied routines from old movies and fiction that he, in his world, is doing for the first time. This is inventive farce with touches of high seriousness and ethical good sense, and two of the nastiest doomed hitmen outside Tarantino. --Roz Kaveney -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

The Truth, Pratchett's 25th Discworld novel, skewers the newspaper business. When printing comes to Ankh-Morpork, it "drag(s) the city kicking and screaming into the Century of the Fruitbat." Well, actually, out of the Century of the Fruitbat. As the Bursar remarks, if the era's almost over, it's high time they embraced its challenges.

William de Worde, well-meaning younger son of reactionary nobility, has been providing a monthly newsletter to the elite using engraving. Then he is struck (and seriously bruised) by the power of the press. The dwarves responsible convince William to expand his letter and the Ankh-Morpork Times is born. Soon William has a staff, including Sacharissa Cripslock, a genteel young lady with a knack for headline writing, and photographer Otto Chriek. Otto's vampirism causes difficulties: flash pictures cause him to crumble to dust and need reconstitution, and he must battle his desire for blood, particularly Sacharissa's. When Lord Vetinari is accused of attempted murder, the City Watch investigates the peculiar circumstances, but William wants to know what really happened. The odds for his survival drop as his questions multiply.

The Truth is satirical, British, and full of sly jokes. Although this cake doesn't rise quite as high as it did in previous volumes, even ordinary Pratchett is pretty darn good, and those who haven't read a Discworld novel before can start here and go on to that incredible backlist. --Nona Vero -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

"The dwarfs can turn lead into gold." So says the rumor in the medieval-cum-Victorian city of Ankh-Morpork, and like many other improbable things in Pratchett's twenty-fifth Discworld yarn, it turns out to be true. For a crew of dwarf printers has smuggled a press into the city, in defiance of city ruler Lord Vetinari's edict against such machines, and found a canny newsman-editor in young William de Worde, rebellious second son of a rich, powerful, scheming nobleman. William and the dwarfs' subsequent success is helped immeasurably by the arrival, simultaneously with that of the press, of Mr. Pin and Mr. Tulip, professional thugs, to aid a secretive cabal plotting to replace Vetinari with a more pliant, corruptible successor. In the end, Pin, Tulip, and cabal are foiled, thanks to crusading journalism. Pratchett keeps the thin-gruel plot palatable with his usual array of seasonings--cartoonish characters, screwball dialogue, slapstick action, silly names (some of the dwarf printers' monickers are variants of type-style names), and pop-cultural allusions (horror-movie mavens who look sharp will have a field day). Two of the most amusing Discworldians this time are the chemical-ingesting (anything to get a rush), art-savvy hitman Tulip, and the iconographer (i.e., photographer) Otto Chriek, a vampire who has taken the pledge (no more, uh, you know--the b-word), and whose flash technique occasionally reduces him to ashes. Light-hearted, Monty Pythonish stuff that fans of, say, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, shouldn't miss. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

"Other writers are mining the rich seam of comic fantasy that Pratchett first unearthed, but what keeps Pratchett on top is – quite literally – the way he tells them." – The Times

"The Truth is an unmitigated delight and very, very funny…The pace is compelling but he never lets his tale descend into simple farce." – The Times

"[Discworld] has the energy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the inventiveness of Alice in Wonderland…[Terry Pratchett] has an intelligent wit and a truly original grim and comic grasp of the nature of things." – A.S. Byatt, Sunday Times

Auch im 25. Band von Terry Pratchetts weltbekanntem Zyklus geht es turbulent zu. Fortschritt in der Scheibenwelt: neuerdings gibt es eine Tageszeitung und William de Worde ist ihr Herausgeber. Nun brechen all die Bürden des Journalistenlebens über ihn herein. Konkurrenten trachten ihm nach dem Leben, ein halbtoter Vampir nervt, ein Kleingärtner möchte Fotos von seinen Zuchtkartoffeln veröffentlichen. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

William de Worde is the editor of the Discworld's first newspaper. Now he must cope with the traditional perils of a journalist's life - suicidal vampires, obssesional readers and people who want him dead. William just wants to get at "the truth". Unfortunately, everyone else wants to get at him.

Terry Pratchett, geboren 1948, verkaufte seine erste Geschichte im zarten Alter von dreizehn Jahren und ist heute einer der erfolgreichsten Autoren überhaupt. Neben Douglas Adams und Tom Sharpe gilt er als Großbritanniens scharfsinnigster und pointensicherster Komik-Spezialist. Er lebt mit seiner Frau Lyn und seiner Tochter Rhianna in Wiltshire. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine vergriffene oder nicht verfügbare Ausgabe dieses Titels.

The rumour spread through the city like wildfire (which had quite often spread through Ankh-Morpork since its citizens had learned the words 'fire insurance').

The dwarfs can turn lead into gold . . .

It buzzed through the fetid air of the Alchemists' quarter, where they had been trying to do the same thing for centuries without success but were certain that they'd manage it by tomorrow, or next Tuesday at least, or the end of the month for definite.

It caused speculation among the wizards at Unseen University, where they knew you could turn one element into another element, provided you didn't mind it turning back again next day, and where was the good in that? Besides, most elements were happy where they were.

It seared into the scarred, puffy and sometimes totally missing ears of the Thieves' Guild, where people put an edge on their crowbars. Who cared where the gold came from?

The dwarfs can turn lead into gold . . .

It reached the cold but incredibly acute ears of the Patrician, and it did that fairly quickly, because you did not stay ruler of Ankh-Morpork for long if you were second with the news. He sighed and made a note of it, and added it to a lot of other notes.

The dwarfs can turn lead into gold . . .

It reached the pointy ears of the dwarfs.

'Can we?'

'Damned if I know. I can't.'

'Yeah, but if you could, you wouldn't say. I wouldn't say, if I could.'

'Can you?'

'No!'

'Ah-ha!'

It came to the ears of the Night Watch of the city guard, as they did gate duty at ten o'clock on an icy night. Gate duty in Ankh-Morpork was not taxing. It consisted mainly of waving through anything that wanted to go through, although traffic was minimal in the dark and freezing fog.

They hunched in the shelter of the gate arch, sharing one damp cigarette.

'You can't turn something into something else,' said Corporal Nobbs. 'The Alchemists have been trying it for years.'

'They can gen'rally turn a house into a hole in the ground,' said Sergeant Colon.

'That's what I'm talking about,' said Corporal Nobbs. 'Can't be done. It's all to do with . . . elements. An alchemist told me. Everything's made up of elements, right? Earth, Water, Air, Fire and . . . sunnink. Well-known fact. Everything's got 'em all mixed up just right.'

He stamped his feet in an effort to get some warmth into them.

'If it was possible to turn lead into gold, everyone'd be doing it,' he said.

'Wizards could do it,' said Sergeant Colon.

'Oh, well, magic,' said Nobby dismissively.

A large cart rumbled out of the yellow clouds and entered the arch, splashing Colon as it wobbled through one of the puddles that were such a feature of Ankh-Morpork's highways.

'Bloody dwarfs,' he said, as it continued on into the city. But he didn't say it too loudly.

'There were a lot of them pushing that cart,' said Corporal Nobbs reflectively. It lurched slowly round a corner and was lost to view.

'Prob'ly all that gold,' said Colon.

'Hah. Yeah. That'd be it, then.'

And the rumour came to the ears of William de Worde, and in a sense it stopped there, because he dutifully wrote it down.

It was his job. Lady Margolotta of Uberwald sent him five dollars a month to do it. The Dowager Duchess of Quirm also sent him five dollars. So did King Verence of Lancre, and a few other Ramtop notables. So did the Seriph of Al Khali, although in his case the payment was half a cartload of figs, twice a year.

All in all, he considered, he was on to a good thing. All he had to do was write one letter very carefully, trace it backwards on to a piece of boxwood provided for him by Mr Cripslock the engraver in the Street of Cunning Artificers, and then pay Mr Cripslock twenty dollars to carefully remove the wood that wasn't letters and make five impressions on sheets of paper.

Of course, it had to be done thoughtfully, with spaces left after 'To my Noble Client the', and so on, which he had to fill in later, but even deducting expenses it still left him the best part of thirty dollars for little more than one day's work a month.

A young man without too many responsibilities could live modestly in Ankh-Morpork on thirty or forty dollars a month; he always sold the figs, because although it was possible to live on figs you soon wished you didn't.

And there were always additional sums to be picked up here and there. The world of letters was a closed boo- mysterious papery object to many of Ankh-Morpork's citizens, but if they ever did need to commit things to paper quite a few of them walked up the creaky stairs past the sign 'William de Worde: Things Written Down'.

Dwarfs, for example. Dwarfs were always coming to seek work in the city, and the first thing they did was send a letter home saying how well they were doing. This was such a predictable occurrence, even if the dwarf in question was so far down on his luck that he'd been forced to eat his helmet, that William had Mr Cripslock produce several dozen stock letters which needed only a few spaces filled in to be perfectly acceptable.

Fond dwarf parents all over the mountains treasured letters which looked something like this:

Dear [Mume & Dad],

Well, I arrived here all right and I am staying, at [109 Cockbill Street The Shades Ankh-Morpk]. Everythyng is fine. I have got a goode job working for [Mr C.M.O.T. Dibbler, Merchant Venturer] and will be makinge lots of money really soon now. I am rememberinge alle your gode advyce and am not drinkynge, in bars or mixsing with Trolls. Well thas about itte muƒt goe now, looking forwade to seing you and [Emelia] agane, your loving son,

[Tomas Brokenbrow]

. . . who was usually swaying while he dictated it. It was twenty pence easily made, and as an additional service William carefully tailored the spelling to the client and allowed them to choose their own punctuation.

On this particular evening, with the sleet gurgling in the downspouts outside his lodgings, William sat in the tiny office over the Guild of Conjurors and wrote carefully, half listening to the hopeless but painstaking catechism of the trainee conjurors at their evening class in the room below.

'. . . pay attention. Are you ready? Right. Egg. Glass . . .'

'Egg. Glass,' the class droned listlessly.

'. . . Glass. Egg . . .'

'Glass. Egg . . .'

'. . . Magic word . . .'

'Magic word . . .'

'Fazammm. Just like that. Ahahahahaha . . .'

'Faz-ammm. Just like that. Aha-ha-ha-ha-ha . . .'

William pulled another sheet of paper towards him, sharpened a fresh quill, stared at the wall for a moment and then wrote as follows:

And finally, on the lighter Side, it is being said that the Dwarfs can Turn Lead into Gold, though no one knows whence the rumour comes, and Dwarfs going about their lawful occaƒions in the City are hailed with cries such as, e.g., 'Hollah, short stuff, let's see you make some Gold then!' although only Newcomers do this because all here know what happens if you call a Dwarf 'short stuff', viz., you are Dead.

Yr. obdt. servant, William de Worde

He always liked to finish his letters on a happy note.

He fetched a sheet of boxwood, lit another candle and laid the letter face down on the wood. A quick rub with the back of a spoon transferred the ink, and thirty dollars and enough figs to make you really ill were as good as in the bank.

He'd drop it into Mr Cripslock tonight, pick up the copies after a leisurely lunch tomorrow, and with any luck should have them all away by the middle of the week.

William put on his coat, wrapped the wood block carefully in some waxed paper and stepped out...