Football has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork—not the old-fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go gloing when you drop them.
And now, the wizards of Unseen University must win a football match, without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else.
The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr Nutt (and no one knows anything much about Mr Nutt, not even Mr Nutt, which worries him, too.)
As the match approaches, four lives are entangled and changed for ever. Because the thing about football—the important thing about football—is that it is not just about football.
Here we go! Here we go! Here we go!
Sir Terence David John Pratchett, more commonly known as Terry Pratchett, is an English novelist, known for his frequently comical work in the fantasy genre. He is best known for his popular and long-running Discworld series of comic fantasy novels. Pratchett's first novel, The Carpet People, was published in 1971, and since his first Discworld novel (The Color of Magic) was published in 1983, he has written two books a year on average. Pratchett is also known for close collaboration on adaptations of his books.
Pratchett was the UK's bestselling author of the 1990s, and as of December 2007, he has sold more than 55 million books worldwide, with translations made into 36 languages. He is currently the second most-read writer in the UK, and seventh most-read non-US author in the US. In 2001, he won the Carnegie Medal for his children's novel The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents.
Pratchett was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) "for services to literature" in 1998. He was knighted in the 2009 New Year Honours. In December 2007, Pratchett publicly announced that he was suffering from early onset Alzheimer's disease, subsequently making a substantial public donation to the Alzheimer's Research Trust, and filming a program chronicling his experiences with the disease for the BBC.
