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jasper fforde bio


Really Very Very Short Bio:

Jasper Fforde has been writing in the Comedy/Fantasy Genre since 2001 when his novel 'The Eyre Affair' debuted on the New York Times Bestseller list. 'Red Side Story', to be published in February 2024, is his 17th novel and he counts his sales in millions. He lives and works in his adopted nation of Wales.

Slightly longer Bio:

Jasper Fforde spent twenty years in the film business before debuting on the New York Time Bestseller list with 'The Eyre Affair' in 2001. His 17th novel, 'Red Side Story', will be published in the UK in 2024.

Fforde's writing is an eclectic mix of genres, which might be described as a joyful blend of Comedy-SF-thriller-Crime-Satire. He freely admits that he is fascinated not just by books themselves, but by the way we read and what we read, and his reinvigoration of tired genres have won him many enthusiastic supporters across the world.

Amongst Fforde's output are police procedurals featuring nursery rhyme characters; a four-book series for Young Adults about Magic and Dragons set in a shabby world of failing magical powers,'Shades of Grey' (2011) a post-apocalyptic dystopia where social hierarchy is based on the colours you can see, 'Early Riser' (2018), a thriller set in a world in which humans have always hibernated, and 'The Constant Rabbit' (2020), an allegory about racism and xenophobia in the UK.

Fforde was born in England but has recently decided to adopt the nationality of where he lives when he heard that: 'When you truly love Wales, you are Welsh'.

Tediously Long Bio:

Jasper began his career in the film industry, and for nineteen years held a variety of posts on such movies as Goldeneye, The Mask of Zorro and Entrapment. Secretly harbouring a desire to tell his own stories rather than help other people tell their's, Jasper started writing in 1988, and spent eleven years secretly writing novel after novel as he strove to find a style of his own that was a no-mans-land somewhere between the warring factions of Literary and Absurd.

After receiving 76 rejection letters from publishers, Jasper's first novel The Eyre Affair was taken on by Hodder & Stoughton and published in July 2001. Set in 1985 in a world that is similar to our own, but with a few crucial - and bizarre - differences (Wales is a socialist republic, the Crimean War is still ongoing and the most popular pets are home-cloned dodos), The Eyre Affair introduces literary detective named 'Thursday Next'. Thursday's job includes spotting forgeries of Shakespeare's lost plays, mending holes in narrative plot lines, and rescuing characters who have been kidnapped from literary masterpieces.

Luckily for Jasper, the novel garnered dozens of effusive reviews, and received high praise from the press, booksellers and readers throughout the UK. In the US The Eyre Affair was an instant hit, entering the New York Times Bestseller List in its first week of publication.

Since then, Jasper has added another six to the Thursday Next series and has also begun a second series that he calls 'Nursery Crime', featuring Jack Spratt of The Nursery Crime Division. In the first book, 'The Big Over Easy', Humpty Dumpty is the victim in a whodunnit, and in the second, 'The Fourth Bear', the Three Bear's connection to Goldilocks disappearance can finally be revealed.

In January 2011 Fforde published 'Shades of Grey', in which a fragmented society struggle to survive in a colour-obsessed post-apocalyptic landscape.

His latest series is for Young Adults and include 'The Last Dragonslayer' (2010), 'Song of the Quarkbeast' (2011), 'The Eye of Zoltar' (2013) and 'The Great Troll War' (2021). All the books centre around Jennifer Strange, who manages a company of magicians named 'Kazam', and her attempts to keep the noble arts from the clutches of big business and property tycoons.

Jasper's 14th Book, 'Early Riser' is a thriller set in a world in which humans have always hibernated, and his 15th is 'The Constant Rabbit' about anthropomorphised rabbits becoming the underclass in a post-Brexit Britain (2020). Red Side Story, a sequel to 2011's 'Shades of Grey' will be published in February 2024.

Fforde was born in England but has recently decided to adopt the nationality of where he lives when he heard that: 'When you truly love Wales, you are Welsh'. He has a passion for movies, photography, and aviation.