Wild About Harry (novel)

Wild About Harry is the first novel by British writer Paul Pickering. It was published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1985 and Collins in 1986. The book was published in America by Atheneum Books in 1985. Pickering researched the novel in Paraguay when he was sent to look for the Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele by Sir James Goldsmith’s NOW! magazine.^[1]

Plot summary

In Paraguay an English Major, Harry Copeland-Smith is guarding a war criminal and in his best efforts to protect him becomes like his charge.

The Times called the book the best black comedy of the year^[2] and Valentine Cunningham, Professor of English language and literature at the University of Oxford said in The Observer that it was a 'smashing debut from a new comic novelist of terrific promise.'^[3] The Listener magazine said it was better than Graham Greene.^[4] The novel was long-listed for the Booker Prize and shortlisted for the David Higham Prize for Fiction and received good reviews.^[5]

^ Profile and interview in The Guardian, 23 March 1985.
^ "Times Critics’ Choice", The Times, 30 November 1985
^ The Observer, 14 April 1985, Valentine Cunningham
^ The Listener, April 1985, Marghanita Laski.
^ "Booker contenders", The Bookseller, 29 June 1985; The Times, 11 April 1985, Andrew Sinclair; "Times Critics’ Choice", The Times, 30 November 1985; "Christmas Books", The Observer, 1 December 1985; Punch, 29 May 1985, Christopher Pym; Winston-Salem Journal, 1 December 1985, H.K. Monroe; The Philadelphia Inquirer, 15 December 1985; San Francisco Chronicle, 12 January 1986, Carl Maves.