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Going Postal

Going Postal

High FantasyFantasy
Pages
484
Published
2004
Language
English

Synopsis

Moist von Lipwig is a con man. He is very good at it. He has just been hanged for it, but he has been given a second chance by Lord Vetinari: run the Ankh-Morpork Post Office, which has been defunct for thirty years and is staffed by one deeply unreliable old man and a young man who communicates primarily through stamps. The clacks towers — the semaphore communication network — are owned by people who are actively trying to destroy the Post Office. Moist must reinvent a dead institution, stay alive, and possibly change.

Prose complexity
4/10

Vibe

FunnySatiricalAdventurousWhimsicalThought-ProvokingLighthearted
Redemption ArcAnti-HeroSecond Chance

Genres

High Fantasy Fantasy Humor Comic Fiction Drama Satire

About the author

T
Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett (1948–2015) was an English author best known for the Discworld series, a sequence of forty-one comic fantasy novels set on a flat world carried through space on the backs of four elephants standing on a giant turtle. Across four decades, the Discworld grew from a parody of sword-and-sorcery fantasy into one of the most sustained works of social satire in English literature, examining politics, religion, science, gender, race, capitalism, and the nature of stories themselves. Pra...

Characters

Moist von LipwigProtagonist

A condemned con artist given a second life running the ruined Post Office.

Reacher GiltAntagonist

The rapacious financier controlling the clacks communication network.

Adora Belle DearheartSupporting

A chain-smoking, sharp-edged golem-rights activist and Moist's match.

Havelock VetinariSupporting

The Patrician who offers Moist his impossible bargain.

Stanley HowlerSupporting

A young Post Office employee with an all-consuming obsession with pins — a character whose neurodivergent qualities Pratchett writes with surprising tenderness.

All characters in Going Postal

Frequently asked questions

  • When was Going Postal published?

    First published on 25 September 2004 by Doubleday. It is the thirty-third Discworld novel and the first Moist von Lipwig book.

  • Is Going Postal a good entry point for new Discworld readers?

    Yes — it is one of the best. Moist von Lipwig is a new character with no prior history in the series, the plot is completely self-contained, and the satire of corporate malfeasance is broadly accessible. Many readers start here.

  • What is the clacks network?

    The clacks is a semaphore-based communication network covering the Disc — towers with shutters that pass signals at speed. In Going Postal it has been acquired by a company that is running it at maximum profit while allowing the towers to decay, killing the operators. It is Pratchett's satire of deregulated privatization.

  • Was Going Postal adapted?

    Going Postal was adapted as a two-part television film by Sky in 2010, starring Richard Coyle as Moist and Charles Dance as Vetinari. It received positive reviews.

  • What does Going Postal say about redemption?

    Moist's arc is unusual in Pratchett: a villain protagonist who does not obviously feel guilt but whose actions gradually accumulate moral weight until he has to choose between the con and the thing he has accidentally built. Pratchett does not moralize — he simply shows the work.

  • Did Going Postal win any awards?

    Going Postal was a finalist for the 2005 Nebula Award for Best Novel and placed third in the 2005 Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel. It would also have been shortlisted for the Hugo Award for Best Novel, but Pratchett withdrew it himself to avoid the stress of the ceremony ahead of that year's Worldcon. It did not win any of these.

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