Riotous Assembly

Imagine the writer you would get if you mixed P.G. Wodehouse and Hunter Thompson, and then placed them in South Africa; that's Tom Sharpe. He indeed manages to combine the wit and language skills, as well as the awkward situations of Wodehouse with the sharpened pen of satire and low opinion of humans from Thompson, and his target is South Africa and the police forces there (I believe that he was jailed there for awhile, and ultimately deported).

Upon finishing Riotous Assembly, I rushed to see if I could find any more by this Sharpe fellow. Luckily, Vintage has brought him across the sea for our enjoyment. Indecent Exposure is the sequel to Riotous Assembly and just as funny; perhaps even funnier, given the satire of the Dornford Yates club (a group of Englishmen who adore the veddy British writer Dornford Yates who is clearly an analog for Wodehouse) within the larger South African satire. I also read Wilt, in which he drops some of the satirical and plays the perverted Wodehouse more. Wilt is okay, but I would suggest you try the South African novels first. If you're like me, you'll have to read Wilt or any of his other novels then--just because you can't get enough of this amazing fellow.


Keystone Kops Kapers in the RSA   August 13, 2004
A. Ross (Washington, DC)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

If you're ever in the mood for a hugely over-the-top farce about apartheid-era South Africa, well, this is the book for you. Sharpe spent a decade there before being deported as a subversive, and after reading this unrestrained comic pummeling of the RSA, one can only wonder why it took the authorities so long to give him the boot. Indeed authority is target number one in this fast-paced story set in the small city of Piemburg. It all starts when an elderly semi-aristocratic Englishwoman calls the police to report that she's shot her Zulu cook. Refusing police Kommandant van Heerden's best attempts to cover up the matter, she reveals that the cook was also her lover, which so appalls him that he immediately declares a state of emergency and mobilizes the entire police force. And so begins a massive comedy of errors, in which a "Kaffir-Killer" Konstabel Els plays a large role, as does the slimy Luitenant Veerkamp, and matters take a turn for the utterly bizarre, as rubber fetishes, bondage, a drunken bishop, porno films, cross dressing, and penile novocain injections are all introduced to the plot. As one might surmise from such a litany, the plot spins ever more wildly out of control until events come to a head at--appropriately enough--the insane asylum. All the antics are intermittently funny, and it's somewhat refreshing to see the horrors of apartheid treated with rather less than the usual gravitas. Worth a read if you've got a special interest in South Africa or a soft spot for broad farce, otherwise not all that noteworthy


Over the top political farce--funny but crude   May 17, 2007
David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful


This is political farce with a vengeance. The back jacket on the paperback says this book is not a political book in any imagined sense of that term and that's essentially true. The author's position on the old South African regime is pretty clear from the word "go" but it never dampens the fun.

The book is so over the top that its characters come off as cardboard cutouts of a caricature--yet, somehow, Sharpe still finds a way to imbue them with enough connective personality that we are drawn into the farce willingly. The book is extremely funny--I laughed out loud at least twenty times. It is a rather crude undertaking--but then again, so was the old South Africa, and this books achieves the unique aspect of being extremely sexually explicit while never actually rendering an actual sex scene--not for want of trying on the "heroines" part.

All in all a lot of fun is the crudity and explicitness don't put you off. If that's the case, seek humor elsewhere.

I enjoyed it enough that I have ordered another couple of Sharpe's books to see if they are as good. I have high hopes on that score.




Funny but unexceptional   October 30, 2002
Krige Siebrits (Pretoria, South Africa)
2 out of 5 found this review helpful

In many respects, apartheid South Africa provides a great setting for farces and satirical novels. Tom Sharpe ably exploits the possibilities in this tale involving an interracial affair, a bishop who ends up in the wrong place at the wrong time, and a murder investigation by irredeemably dumb and racist Afrikaner policemen.
Parts of Riotous assembly are very funny and Sharpe maintains the hectic pace of the narrative throughout. But in the end, I was disappointed with this book. My dissatisfaction had nothing to do with being an Afrikaner or with an aversion to dark humour. Carl Hiaasen is one of my favourite authors, and I thoroughly enjoyed the movie version of Sharpe's Wilt. My problem was with the characters, who seemed to have no personalities whatsoever beyond the stereotypes they represent. To truly enjoy a book (even a farce), I have to develop an interest in or establish some kind of rapport with the characters, and in the case of Riotous assembly this never happened.


To Be Read Not For Plot   February 19, 2006
Alessandro di Cagliostro
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

This decidedly intemperate dark jewel has been criticized for, among other things, being short on a coherent logical plot. Fair enough. And saturated with unsympathetic characters. Point taken. So what? If you can find a better written rant of absurd, politically incorrect, howlingly hilarious black (as in motif, not ethnic) humor by all means set Riotous Assembly aside and go with your more entertaining discovery, and be so kind as to post its name here so that we may all partake.

Compared to Riotous Assembly, Mel Brooks' best sounds like a grim Savonarola tract.