“The black hat serves as a disguise for me,” he explained in an interview. “Without her, no one can recognize me.” Although the total circulation of his books has exceeded 65 million copies, Terry Pratchett prefers to remain a mystery.
I first discovered Pratchett’s book on vacation, turning my vacation into torture in one moment. At first, the sea, the beach, evening walks began to seem to me a senseless waste of precious time, which I would have spent more usefully and with pleasure reading a book. And then, too quickly, the book ended, and it got worse. As it turned out, there were no other Pratchett novels in the house, and there were none in the neighborhood. And I could only think about how to quickly return to Moscow with its numerous bookstores.
Pratchett has written over 60 novels. 38 of them are included in the Flat World series. The novels of the series are both a parody (a summary table of the parodied can be found on the author’s website – www.terrypratchett.co.uk), and a full-fledged fantasy novel, and – perhaps most importantly for me – a collection of paradoxical, funny, but always accurate descriptions the world around us. Pratchett didn’t invent Flat World, he took our Round World, unrolled it, hung it on the wall like a painting, and then, with his usual sense of humor, described what he saw. Here, for example, about appearance: “Beauty. Grace. That’s what matters. If cats looked like toads, we would understand what vicious and cruel little bastards they are. Style. That’s what people remember.”
His view of the world
“Flat World” is a planet standing on four elephants that rest on the back of a turtle flying through space. Humans, werewolves, vampires and goblins live relatively peacefully on it.
“So many people write dissertations about me! It’s flattering, but trying to parse makes me very nervous. I am afraid that these people will not be able to find work later. And I, of course, I’m afraid that they will still be offered a job.
“I never tire of being amazed at how deeply we are able to know the world. There are no insurmountable barriers on our way.”
His dates
- April 28, 1948 Born in Beaconsfield (UK).
- 1983 The first book in the Flat World series, The Color of Magic, is published.
- 1987 After the publication of the fourth novel in the series, he resigned from the British Central Electricity Authority, where he worked as a press secretary.
- 1994 Named “Writer of the Year” in the Fantasy and Science Fiction category of the British Book Awards.
- 1998 Awarded the Order of the British Empire.
- December 11, 2007 Announces that he has been diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer’s disease.
- 2009 Knighted “for services to literature”.
- 2010 The 38th novel in the Discworld series, I Shall Wear Midnight, is published.
Pratchett has something to say on all issues of concern to mankind – the Egyptian pyramids, theater, football, Buddhism, life and death. If I had any questions about all this, Pratchett answered them. Only one remained. The little devil that sits in my Longines and moves the hands, and the little devil that sits in my friend’s Swatch. Are they related or just colleagues?
Pratchett is an atheist and does not hide his skepticism about the gods, big and small: “People! They live in a world where the grass stays green and the sun rises every day and the flowers turn into fruit with regularity, and what really impresses them? Weeping statues. And wine made from water!.. As if the transformation of sunlight into wine through vines, figs, time and enzymes were not a thousand times more impressive and did not happen all the time.”
Recently, he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. His response to this was: “I will try to live as long as possible, but at the same time I will choose how and when I die.” Since then, he has also become famous as one of the most active supporters of the liberalization of euthanasia laws. He speaks his novels using a special computer program – he can no longer print. But when you open his new book, you immediately forget that it was written by a man suffering from atrophy of the posterior cortex. And when you suddenly remember, you can not believe it.
“A group of leaders who have no one to lead”
“Artists and writers have always had a somewhat distorted idea of what goes on at witches’ sabbats. It’s just that these people spend too much time in stuffy rooms with drawn curtains, instead of occasionally taking a walk in the healthy fresh air.
Here, for example, the notorious naked dances. In places with a temperate climate, it is extremely rare to get such nights when it would occur to someone to strip naked and dance something there. Not to mention the pebbles underfoot, thistles and all kinds of thorns.
Next is food and drink. The meat of various reptiles and all that stuff. In fact, witches do not eat anything like that. You can, of course, reproach: they put so much sugar in a cup that you can’t turn a spoon later, they constantly dip gingerbread cookies into tea and drink, noisily sipping from a saucer – we are more used to hearing such squelching from sewers; even if they ate frog legs, they would make a much nicer impression. But that’s about all you can blame them for…
And finally, the covens themselves as such. A witch is by no means a herd animal, especially when it comes to other witches. They always have a conflict of strong personalities. A bunch of witches is a group consisting entirely of leaders who have no one to lead. The basic unwritten rule of witchcraft is: “Do not what you want, but what I tell you.” Therefore, the expression “witch’s coven” is fundamentally wrong, usually it is “witch’s coven.”
Witches gather together only when there is no other way out.
Terry Pratchett “Witches Abroad” (EXMO, 2008).
Nikolai Zubov is a journalist, head of the foreign information department of the Kommersant Publishing House.