One Big Damn Puzzler

Hitting the funny bone and touching the heart, the new novel by the author of What We Did On Our Holiday.

Enormously enjoyable...Harding tackles this novel's huge, tragic subject with a blissfully skewed lightness of touch.

Masterly...ambitious in scope and executed with wit and exuberance, John Harding has created a rich, complex and endearing fictitious world which holds important truths for our own.

Instantly winning...it made me laugh. A lot...Gaugin-gaudy, and as rich and spicy as a good dish of stewed yam

Blackly comic...intensely literary...an allusive tour de force... thoroughly entertaining.

A multi-layered comedy...laugh-out-loud funny, ambitious, carefully constructed, addictive, this novel is one big damn fine achievement.

Filled with memorable characters and generous helpings of wit and compassion...you will be hooked to the very end.

A favourite of mine, a fine satirical work...highly imaginative.

SARAH BROADHURST, BOOKSELLER Paperback Preview 2006

Feel-good...life affirming...genuinely original...both laugh-out-loud funny and moving.

John Harding was born in the Isle of Ely in 1951. After local village and grammar schools, he read English at Oxford. He worked as a newspaper reporter, magazine writer and editor before becoming a freelance writer. His first novel, the bestselling What We Did On Our Holiday was shortlisted for the WHSmith New Talent Award. He lives in Richmond upon Thames with his wife and two sons.

On a remote South Pacific island paradise, an elderly tribesman is translating Hamlet into local Pidgin English. Much to his annoyance, his struggles with the Bard are interrupted by the arrival of an unexpected visitor. William Hardt is a young American lawyer, he has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and he has come to help. And from that moment on, nothing will ever be the same. For what (and who) he finds there will challenge both his and our values and our ideas about love, life and even death. 
Bursting with good things, from the islanders themselves - with their curious logic, strange notions about sex and addictive rendering of English - to moments of aching sadness as much as life-affirming farce, this exuberantly original novel confirms John Harding as one of contemporary fiction's most entertaining and observant chroniclers of the human condition.

While The Sun Shines

Gloriously funny, affecting and acutely observed second novel from the author of WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAY

'Beautifully crafted...the perfect marriage of humour and heart'

'A wonderful novel...written with great humour and a rare generosity of spirit. Truly original'

'Pognant, hilarious and ultimately deeply moving...a wonderful novel'

John Harding was born in a small Fenland village in the Isle of Ely in 1951. After local village and grammar schools, he read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford, where he once sat next to Martin Amis during a lecture. He worked first as a newspaper reporter, then as a writer and editor in magazines, before becoming a freelance writer. His first novel was the acclaimed and bestselling  WHAT WE DID ON OUR HOLIDAY. He lives in Richmond upon Thames with his wife and two sons.

At fifty the guarantee runs out... 
About to hit the big five-oh, obsessed with sex, cocaine-fuelled and gripped by a crippling fear of death, Professor Michael Cole is finding life a bit of a struggle. 
It's finding the time to squeeze everything in, really. He's supposedly writing the definitive biography of his literary hero, John Donne, but barely manages three hundred words a week. His insatiable enthusiasm for his prettier female students might be partly to blame, but they are only young once. And the fact that one of his female colleagues has yet to succumb to his charms is, admittedly, a distraction he could well do without. But throw in a fight for promotion, a wife to lie to and two small children to look after and it's no wonder his blood pressure has reached life-threatening heights. He knows the time has come to act his age. The question is how. 
Because Michael Cole is very much a creature of habit and, as we all know, old habits die hard. But it's when he's caught in the act of adultery by his grandmother that Cole truly begins to see the writing on the wall. After all, she's been dead for twenty-five years... 
 
Marrying humour, heart and a singular understanding of the human condition, WHILE THE SUN SHINES is an uproariously funny yet hugely affecting novel about growing-old disgracefully and the price we sometimes have to pay...

John Harding

'A wonderfully funny, original and moving novel...Harding has knife-sharp observation, immaculate timing, and the guts to take his story as far as it will go'

'Poignant, hilarious and ultimately deeply moving...a real page turner...a wonderful novel'

Thirty-somethings Nick and Laura have been married for 10 years and things aren't going well. She senses her biological clock ticking away and wants children while he doesn't. Not because he doesn't like children but because he feels a child would be just one responsibility too many. 
Nick's problem is his parents. He's devoted to them of course, but sometimes even he finds his patience wearing a little thin which in turn brings on the guilt. But they are rather a handful. They're conservative, highly eccentric and increasingly infirm. His Mum's so enormously overweight that her heart's now a bit dicky and she is certainly no longer up to looking after Dad by herself. He's got Parkinson's Disease - not the shaking kind, as Mum's always reminding people - but he's unable to do even the simplest task himself and needs constant care and attention. 
Nick knows the time has come to take the matter in hand but things need to be handled carefully. And so he and Laura take them to Malta for what they hope will be a happy final family holiday. Nick thinks his only problem is going to be avoiding Laura's amorous advances but this particular island turns out to be a sun-kissed cupboard with more than its fair share of skeletons... 
Tackling a taboo subject with sensitivity, understanding, great affection and good humour, What We Did On Our Holiday is a remarkably uplifting, moving and reassuring novel about a time in our lives when it seems roles are reversed and we find ourselves looking after the very people we'd always assumed would be there to look after us.

John Harding

Praise for What We Did On Our Holiday

'A wonderfully funny, original and moving novel...Harding has knife-sharp observation, immaculate timing, and the guts to take his story as far as it will go'

'Poignant, hilarious and ultimately deeply moving...a real page turner...a wonderful novel'

'A wonderful novel...written with great humour and a rare generosity of spirit. Truly original'

'A wonderfully funny, original and moving novel...Harding has knife-sharp observation, immaculate timing, and the guts to take his story as far as it will go'

'Poignant, hilarious and ultimately deeply moving...a real page turner...a wonderful novel'

'A wonderful novel...written with great humour and a rare generosity of spirit. Truly original'

'A wonderfully funny, original and moving novel...Harding has knife-sharp observation, immaculate timing, and the guts to take his story as far as it will go'

'Poignant, hilarious and ultimately deeply moving...a real page turner...a wonderful novel'

'A wonderful novel...written with great humour and a rare generosity of spirit. Truly original'

Books by John Harding

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