Another characteristically eccentric concept breaks free from the wildly inventive mind of Jasper Fforde as a bizarre tale of human-rabbit coexistence masks a clever allegory about belonging and identity.
Waterstones Welsh Book of the Month for August 2021
England, 2020.
There are 1.2 million human-sized rabbits living in the UK.
They can walk, talk and drive cars, the result of an Inexplicable Anthropomorphising Event fifty-five years ago.
And a family of rabbits is about to move into Much Hemlock, a cosy little village where life revolves around summer fetes, jam-making, gossipy corner stores, and the oh-so-important Best Kept Village awards.
No sooner have the rabbits arrived than the villagers decide they must depart. But Mrs Constance Rabbit is made of sterner stuff, and her family are behind her. Unusually, so are their neighbours, long-time residents Peter Knox and his daughter Pippa, who soon find that you can be a friend to rabbits or humans, but not both.
With a blossoming romance, acute cultural differences, enforced rehoming to a MegaWarren in Wales, and the full power of the ruling United Kingdom Anti Rabbit Party against them, Peter and Pippa are about to question everything they'd ever thought about their friends, their nation, and their species.
It'll take a rabbit to teach a human humanity
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9781444763645
Number of pages: 320
Weight: 230 g
Dimensions: 196 x 128 x 22 mm
A serious minded comedy - Mail on Sunday
A political satire cloaked in Fforde's trademark bizarre whimsy, the novel reads like a crazed cross between Watership Down and Nineteen Eighty-Four. - Guardian
Fforde's engaging writing has created a story that is a clever blend of the biting allegorical satire we expect from Orwell's greatest hits and the good-natured adventures of Michael Bond's naïve and kind-hearted Paddington Bear. - SciFi Now
Jasper Fforde's most chilling and realistic book yet - Guardian
The Constant Rabbit is designed to shake readers out of that complacency: to recognise that merely holding liberal values is not enough to prevent the quickening advance of racism and xenophobia in this country. - Financial Times
It's huge fun too, with all the inventive wordplay, impeccable worldbuilding and fiendish plotting that Fforde's "Constant Readers" have come to expect. - SFX
Fuelled by Fforde's trademark wit, imagination and brilliantly bizarre world-building... You won't read anything quite like this in 2020 - or beyond that too. - CultureFly
Sheer inventiveness, wit, complexity, erudition, unexpectedness and originality - The Times
A born wordsmith of effervescent imagination - Independent
Forget all the rules of time, space and reality; just sit back and enjoy the adventure - Telegraph
Brilliantly funny . . . His relentless imagination and his affection for his characters are contagious and irresistible - New York Times
True literary comic genius - Sunday Express
Reading a Fforde novel feels like taking off on a magic carpet, only to be picked up by another and another and taken on new flights of fantasy . . . you just sit back and enjoy the ride - Scotsman
Jasper Fforde's entertaining, surprisingly thoughtful yet fleet-footed new book-a standalone novel with a climax so dramatic, irrevocable, perfect yet unpredictable that it seems impossible to extend the book to a series-is the comedic master's foray into this thematic realm. It is, as one might expect, by turns droll and hilarious, poignant and cruel, hopeful and despairing. In other words, a true comedy in depth, a form that is not mere mindless japes and slapstick, but one which counsels us that if we don't laugh, we must cry. - Locus
An astonishingly well-crafted work of social and political satire - Kirkus Reviews
Lovely little satire...wonderfully imaginative and very funny. - Spectator
Jasper Fforde has given us another entertaining and satirical look at the human condition, this time with the help of rabbits.
Rabbits are now human-sized following an anthropomorphising Event 55 years ago. Rabbits...
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What an absolute triumph! Mr Fforde has done it again. Just as you’d expect from any of his offerings, The Constant Rabbit is at times incredibly clever, laugh out loud funny, scarily astute and totally nails the... More
No one writes like Jasper Fforde. He has the ability to take the absurd & present it in a way that his version of an alternate society seems completely normal. So when you open this book & find yourself in an... More
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