''Charlie Peace'' is the controversial

comic novel A comic novel is a Novel, novel-length work of humorous fiction. Many well-known authors have written comic novels, including P. G. Wodehouse, Henry Fielding, Mark Twain, and John Kennedy Toole. Comic novels are often defined by the author's liter ...

by British writer Paul Pickering. It was published in the United States by

Random House Random House is an imprint and publishing group of Penguin Random House. Founded in 1927 by businessmen Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer as an imprint of Modern Library, it quickly overtook Modern Library as the parent imprint. Over the foll ...

but not in the United Kingdom because of fears of

Christian A Christian () is a person who follows or adheres to Christianity, a Monotheism, monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus Christ. Christians form the largest religious community in the wo ...

blasphemy prosecutions against the background of

The Satanic Verses controversy The ''Satanic Verses'' controversy, also known as the Rushdie Affair, was a controversy sparked by the 1988 publication of Indian author, Salman Rushdie's novel ''The Satanic Verses''. It centered on the novel's references to the Satanic Ver ...

.''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British Sunday newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of N ...

'', 17 November 1991

Plot summary

Criminal Jack Peachey needs to find his own human narrative in the incredible stories Charlie Peace told him when he was a boy. He wants to imagine a Christ in his own image.

Reception

The book received favourable reviews in the USA. Publishers Weekly called the novel ‘A bizarre, wildly surreal fantasy that lampoons Christianity and organised religion ... makes Salvador Dali’s psychospiritual rantings look tame.’

Publishers Weekly ''Publishers Weekly'' (''PW'') is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents. Published continuously since 1872, it has carried the tagline, "The International News Magazine of ...

, 25 July 1991 The novel not being published in the UK led to Pickering leaving his then publishers

Chatto & Windus Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his busines ...

. The row led

to call Pickering the ‘de facto Norman Mailer of the British literati’ and J. G. Ballard said the book was ‘very entertaining while being genuinely subversive ... not to publish it in Britain is pure censorship.’

Notes

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Plot summary

Reception

Notes

External links