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Moab Is My Washpot

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The original bestselling autobiography by comedian, novelist and national treasure Stephen Fry.

Few people serve time in prison before studying at Cambridge. You might be surprised to know that Stephen Fry is one of them.

Moab is My Washpot, the remarkable story of Stephen Fry's tumultuous early life, is by turns funny, shocking, tender, delicious, sad, lyrical, bruisingly frank and addictively readable.

It's the story of a boy sent to a boarding school 200 miles from home at the age of seven, who survives beatings, misery, love, ecstasy, carnal violation, expulsion, imprisonment, criminal conviction, probation and catastrophe to emerge, at eighteen, ready to try and face the world in which he had always felt a stranger.

Fry writes with the wit and warmth which have become his hallmark, but with shocking candour too. For anyone seeking to understand one of Britain's greatest cultural treasures, this book is utterly essential reading.

© Stephen Fry 1997 (P) Penguin Audio 2010

Critics Review

One of the most poignant, funny, intelligent, frank and horribly addictive books you're likely to read all year
Sunday Telegraph
A remarkable, perhaps even unique, exercise in autobiography ... that aroma of authenticity that is the point of all great autobiographies: of which his, I rather think, is one
Evening Standard
Stephen Fry is one of the great originals ... This autobiography of his first twenty years is a pleasure to read, mixing outrageous acts with sensible opinions in bewildering confusion ... That so much outward charm, self-awareness and intellect should exist alongside behaviour that threatened to ruin the lives of innocent victims, noble parents and Fry himself, gives the book a tragic grandeur and lifts it to classic status
Financial Times
He writes superbly about his family, about his homosexuality, about the agonies of childhood ... some of his bursts of simile take the breath away ... his most satisfying and appealing book so far
Observer
This is one of the most extraordinary and affecting biographies I have read . . . Stephen is . . . painfully honest when trying to grapple with his ever-present demons, and often, as you might expect, very funny
Daily Mail
The writing is rhapsodic, intoxicated and very touching
Mail on Sunday
[A] wonderful, self-lacerating autobiography
Humphrey Carpenter, Sunday Times
He has produced a remarkable autobiography . . . It makes gripping, sometimes unbearably sad, sometimes confusing reading . . . exhilarating, humane, zany, literary
Spectator
No one can make you feel quite like Stephen Fry can . . . Funny and tormentedly frank
Time Out
Hugely enjoyable . . . compulsively readable . . . Fry is excellent on the details of memory, too, and always able to embellish them with effortless erudition . . . this engaging, engrossing read is as honest a portrait of a young liar as one could hope to read
Scotsman
Author Stephen Fry
Narrator Stephen Fry
Duration 11 hours and 30 minutes
Release Date
ISBN 9781409099994
Format Audiobook
Publisher Random House
Genre Autobiography: arts and entertainment, Film, TV and Radio industries, Humour, Individual actors and performers, Memoirs
Availability AU, GB, IE

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