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Moab is My Washpot
 
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Moab is My Washpot (Paperback)

by Stephen Fry (Author)
4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
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Moab is My Washpot + The Hippopotamus + The Liar
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Product details

  • Paperback: 368 pages
  • Publisher: Arrow Books Ltd; New edition edition (5 Aug 2004)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 0099457040
  • ISBN-13: 978-0099457046
  • Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 13 x 3 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (38 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 610 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories:

    #1 in  Books > Fiction > Authors, A-Z > F > Fry, Stephen
    #3 in  Books > Fiction > Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards > Popular Fiction
    #6 in  Books > Music, Stage & Screen > Performing Arts

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Product Description

Review
"'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"

Product Description
'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 smile take the breath away- his most satisfying and appealing book so far" - "Observer".

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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Moab is My Washpot
82% buy the item featured on this page:
Moab is My Washpot 4.6 out of 5 stars (38)
£5.99
The Hippopotamus
6% buy
The Hippopotamus 4.7 out of 5 stars (20)
£5.99
The Liar
4% buy
The Liar 4.2 out of 5 stars (54)
£5.99
Making History
4% buy
Making History 4.5 out of 5 stars (42)
£5.99

 

Customer Reviews

38 Reviews
5 star:
 (29)
4 star:
 (6)
3 star:    (0)
2 star:
 (2)
1 star:
 (1)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (38 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars stephen fry is great!, 3 Jan 2001
This review is from: Moab Is My Washpot (Paperback)
This autobiography is of the first twenty years of Stephen's life. I started to read it vaguely knowing that this was the bloke off 'Blackadder' but once I'd finished, I rushed out and bought 'The Liar' and 'The Hippopotamus'. This book is brilliant. It is completely candid about Stephen's depression, homosexuality and school life, among others. It is, however, hilarious all the way through. The reader never feels inferior to Stephen's undoubted intelligence because of the way he mocks himself so easily. By the end of the book, all I wanted to do was go and find him and give him a big hug and tell him everything will be fine! I would definitely recommend this book to anyone and everyone, and also his other books which are all excellent as well.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Witty but brutally honest, 7 Nov 2007
By Natureboy (London) - See all my reviews
This autobiography may come as something of a surprise for those who see Stephen Fry on the television and imagine that he's always been a sort of friendly uncle/Oscar Wilde hybrid. His early life was certainly troubled - for example, not everyone steals their girlfriend's (sic) father's credit card in order to be able to run away from school - but he writes about his first twenty years with a complete lack of whining or self-pity, and is unafraid to show the reader his own very grave failings.

Fry's wit and candour make this book very difficult to put down - indeed, I ended up reading it one session and, when coming to the end, investigating whether he had written further volumes. Sadly, he hasn't yet, so we'll just have to make do with this little gem for the moment.
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100 of 109 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars This Book has absolutely blown my Mind, 18 Mar 2007
OK, this book is therapy. Reading it is, and I suspect writing it was too. I started it at 18:00h in the Dublin rush-hour (it's always advisable to have some good reading material at hand in that predicament) and finished it at 05:00h in the morning not even feeling tired, bladder bursting, dehydrated for lack of tea and grinning like a big, happy loon. I then read it all over again, straightaway. It has left me overwhelmed, chastised, wanting to shout out its virtues in Tesco and giddily, exuberantly happy; happy that such excellent language is still being written, that its creator should walk the earth as my contemporary and share his gifts so generously with all of us and, most of all, that he found redemption.

For, make no mistake, this is a redemption story; redemption not in the religious sense but in the sense of a soul coming to terms with itself. Stephen Fry's love for Oscar Wilde is well publicised, so maybe it's no coincidence that this account of his first twenty years reminded me of Wilde's fairy tales, these delicate, heartbreaking, deeply moralistic stories about love, betrayal, redemption and futility. Sometimes he finds himself cast as the Selfish Giant, sometimes as the Nightingale, sometimes as the ugly dwarf from The Birthday of the Infanta, and - might as well make full use of the Wilde connection here - the story about "Matteo" has taught me more about the true meaning of The Love that Dare not Speak its Name than over twenty years of worship at Oscar's throne.

Redemption is ultimately the result of learning to love yourself, and only once you learn to love yourself you can love others (if you don't believe me, look it up in the Bible). It is no wonder, so, that Moab is my Washpot is brimming with love, in the writing, in the feelings it evokes and between the lines. The deep affection for the people around him that is spilling from these pages is what makes even the worst escapades described on them forgivable and makes you want to offer your shoulder to the lying, thieving, betraying 17 year old Stephen to cry on. Where that school boy would have hurt people to hurt himself, 39 year old Stephen, the adult who had forgiven himself, asked them for absolution and received it.

All that said, this is still Stephen Fry we are talking about, so Moab is my Washpot is anything but a soppy hugfest. There are side-splittingly funny anecdotes in this book, deep literary and philosophical insights, acrid rants, pure, hilarious filth, language as beautiful as a white lily next to profanities that would make a sailor blush, fond asides about his colleague, confidante and Alter Ego Hugh Laurie that hint at the essence of their friendship, and everything else that makes Stephen so uniquely Stephen and us so lucky to have him.

Of course there are authors and influences without whom the book wouldn't have been written, or would certainly read very differently. There is a lot of P.G. Wodehouse in the use of simile, the way Stephen Fry displays his view of the world recalls Douglas Adams, and the whole book owes a certain debt to Graham Chapman's A Liar's Autobiography, a must read for everyone who enjoyed it.

Buy this book! Read it! Read it again! Pester libraries to stock it! Shout its virtues from the rooftops and include a copy in the payload of the next space probe to leave the solar system!

Not the full Five Stars, however, as the carthatic atmosphere that pervades this book occasionally - very occasionally that is - threatens to descend to that of a 12 Steps Confessional. Still, as autobiographies go, it is well and truly the dog's bollocks.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars getting over it?
Adolescence - how does anyone get through it? (Supposing that is that we ever do.) Fry proves that it is worth revisiting. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Felix (Brisbane, Australia)

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly written, witty (as expected) and moving
As expected, this book was a wonderful read, full of insights into Stephen Fry's early life and endearing snapshots. Highly recommended.
Published 3 months ago by Mrs. Alison J. Cann

5.0 out of 5 stars Portrait of the artist as a young man
I love Stephen Fry and I only recently stumbled across this autobiography, which describes the highly eventful first 20 years of his life. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Tealady2000

5.0 out of 5 stars Best autobio I've ever read
This really is the best autobiography I've ever read. I went to a public school about 15 years after Fry, and not as a boarder, but reading this brought back floods of wonderous... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Benjamin Curtis

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing reading
I was looking forward with interest to reading this book but after the first couple of chapters found it lost direction and meandered all over the place. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Gervais

4.0 out of 5 stars Thou shalt not question Stephen Fry
As the song says, Thou Shalt Not Question Stephen Fry - but I'm going to do it anyway. I love Stephen Fry. Read more
Published 5 months ago by Patrick Neylan

5.0 out of 5 stars Incredibly Honest
He takes the autobiography genre and makes it his own entirely. One of the newspaper quotes on the back says that he is one of the great originals - and this book shows that in... Read more
Published 7 months ago by R. Macdonald

5.0 out of 5 stars WOW! deary deary dear!
I have read many books from The Odyssey by Homer to Animal Farm by George Orwell and this, this is my favourite book of all time! Read more
Published 9 months ago by Dan osbourne

5.0 out of 5 stars fantastic read
like all stephen fry's book this one was brilliant. a fantastic author. once i started reading i could hardly put it down. it's got me started on reading all of his others.
Published 11 months ago by Alice Young

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant
Like many of the other reviewers, I found I couldn't put this book down. True some of the language gets a bit complicated in places but Fry's amazing narrative style is so... Read more
Published 12 months ago by Ms. Joanne Fitzpatrick

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