The Great Pursuit
- Authors
- Sharpe, Tom
- Publisher
- Arrow
- Tags
- fiction , publishers and publishing , british , modern fiction , satire , humour , general , literary agents , authors and publishers , literature publishing , humorous stories , fiction:humour , impostors and imposture
- ISBN
- 9780099435495
- Date
- 1977-01-01T00:00:00+00:00
- Size
- 0.33 MB
- Lang
- en
Frensic and Futtle is a small and successful literary agency. But following a successful court case by a woman who claimed to have been libeled by one of their authors, the agency rapidly loses business.
One day, a manuscript for a book called *Pause O Men for the Virgin* arrives at the agency, together with a note from the author's solicitor, saying that the author wishes to remain anonymous and that the agency has *carte blanche* on how it deals with the book. The book turns out to deal with the love affair between an 80-year old woman and a 17-year old youth.
The populist American publisher Hutchmeyer agrees to sign a deal to publish the book in the United States for $2 million, providing the author carries out a promotional tour of the country. Sonia and Frensic decide to use aspiring but unpublished author Peter Piper to stand in for the anonymous author. But when Piper receives a proof copy of *Pause* from the publisher by mistake, it takes a certain amount of persuasion and arm-twisting from Sonia Futtle to convince Piper to travel to America.