Imagine a black and white world where colour is a commodity . . .
Hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened, the world is an alarmingly different place.
Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane – a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed.
For Eddie, it’s love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey …
If George Orwell had tripped over a paint pot or Douglas Adams favoured colour swatches instead of towels, neither of them would have come up with anything as eccentrically brilliant as Shades of Grey.
Hundreds of years in the future, after the Something that Happened, the world is an alarmingly different place.
Life is lived according to The Rulebook and social hierarchy is determined by your perception of colour. Eddie Russett is an above average Red who dreams of moving up the ladder by marriage to Constance Oxblood. Until he is sent to the Outer Fringes where he meets Jane – a lowly Grey with an uncontrollable temper and a desire to see him killed.
For Eddie, it’s love at first sight. But his infatuation will lead him to discover that all is not as it seems in a world where everything that looks black and white is really shades of grey …
If George Orwell had tripped over a paint pot or Douglas Adams favoured colour swatches instead of towels, neither of them would have come up with anything as eccentrically brilliant as Shades of Grey.
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Reviews
'Fforde's books are more than an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted . . . and are embellished with the rich details of a Dickens or Pratchett'
'No summaries can do justice to the sheer inventiveness, wit, complexity, erudition, unexpectedness and originality of the works, nor to their vast repertoire of intricate wordplay and puns'
Full of brilliantly inventive wordplay and quirky fabrications
This colour-coded world of black-and-white regulations and heirachies is created with spry invention and wit
'Fans of the late Douglas Adams or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde'
SHADES OF GREY has something of a flavour of Terry Gilliam's Brazil. . .but the novel is much gentler than Gilliam's savage madcappery, and Fforde's world is more old-fashioned public school than bureaucratic nightmare
Full of colourful characters and amusingly bizarre plot twists. . . SHADES OF GREY is a clever and enjoyable read
There are distinct shades of Orwell's 1984
A brilliantly written book- full of witticisms, wordplay and puns