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  • Published: 1 October 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099457046
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $22.99

Moab Is My Washpot

  • Stephen Fry



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

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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.

  • Published: 1 October 2004
  • ISBN: 9780099457046
  • Imprint: Arrow
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 448
  • RRP: $22.99

Praise for Moab Is My Washpot

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

He is bubbly, funny and charming, and he gives his fans plenty of material if they want to speculate on why he is both so gifted and so wayward

The Times

The jokes . . . transcend the complexes of the joker, turning the Stephenesque into a national as well as a family treasure

Guardian

Not so much an autobiography, more a way of life; discursive, funny, sometimes almost unbelievably sad, opinionated, nostalgic and very infectious

Claire Rayner, New Statesman

Fry can be funny about anything

Good Book Guide

So charming and so acute that one cannot help forgiving him

Daily Express

One of the most poignant, funny, intelligent, frank and horribly addictive books you're likely to read all year

Sunday Telegraph

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

A remarkable, perhaps even unique, exercise in autobiography... that aroma of authenticity that is the point of all great autobiographies; of which this, I rather think, is one.

Evening Standard

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... I hope to goodness there'll be a sequel. I can't wait for more.

Daily Mail

The writing is rhapsodic, intoxicated and very touching

Mail on Sunday