This Saturday it will be a year since Alzheimer’s stole Terry Pratchett from the world. We mark the occasion with a beginner’s guide to his most enduring creation, the 41-book Discworld series.
Pratchett’s work is often classified as ‘genre fiction’ rather than literary fiction. Yet his relationship with genre is complex and adversarial. He sets genre stereotypes up to be deconstructed.
‘I knew and counted Terry among my friends, and I watched Alzheimer’s slowly and insidiously strip him of attributes and faculty.’ So what can we make of his final Discworld novel, published posthumously?