by Jasper FForde
British novelist Jasper Fforde wrote his debut novel The Eyre Affair (2001), an alternate history novel, after spending nearly fifteen years working in the film industry. According to Fforde, the novel was rejected seventy-six times before being accepted by a publisher. However, upon publication, it generally received positive reviews praising it for its originality and command of multiple genres.
The novel takes place in an alternate universe where the United Kingdom and Imperial Russia have been fighting the Crimean War for more than one hundred years. The British government is under the sway of the powerful Goliath Corporation, a weapons manufacturer with a vested interest in keeping the nation at war. In addition, literature plays a much larger role in society, with the general public regularly debating issues of literary scholarship, sometimes even to the point of violence and murder.
British novelist Jasper Fforde wrote his debut novel The Eyre Affair (2001), an alternate history novel, after spending nearly fifteen years working in the film industry. According to Fforde, the novel was rejected seventy-six times before being accepted by a publisher. However, upon publication, it generally received positive reviews praising it for its originality and command of multiple genres.
The novel takes place in an alternate universe where the United Kingdom and Imperial Russia have been fighting the Crimean War for more than one hundred years. The British government is under the sway of the powerful Goliath Corporation, a weapons manufacturer with a vested interest in keeping the nation at war. In addition, literature plays a much larger role in society, with the general public regularly debating issues of literary scholarship, sometimes even to the point of violence and murder.
Thursday Next is a LitTech spy with the organization SpecOps27, which specializes in crimes related to works of literature. As a veteran of the Crimean War who lost her brother to the conflict, Thursday is a proponent for peace, though she cannot speak out about it openly because of her job with the government. Due to her familiarity with the master thief and wanted criminal Acheron Hades, Thursday receives an offer to work with a division of her intelligence agency called SpecOps05, a group cloaked in so much secrecy that most agents do not even know what it does
Acheron Hades has been kidnapping characters from works of fiction and holding them to ransom. Jane Eyre is gone. Missing.