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The author slams the corrupt and immoral and highlights the worthy and good in this often outrageous and wonderfully eye-catching book. Brand manages to combine a chillingly creepy Piper and some pretty ghastly characters with quite a lot of toilet humour (so repulsively descriptive it makes you gag and want to put a peg on your nose!). Chris Riddell’s stunning illustrations bewitchingly wrap around, through and under the text, enabling the story to leap from the pages. The old Pied Piper tale is thoroughly stomped on but the morals remain firmly in place. This is a book that actively encourages you to think, it is also likely to make you chortle, gasp, flinch and screech in shock and horror. Yet love it or hate it, it will remain in your mind long after finishing. ~ Liz Robinson
Russell Brand's Trickster Tales: The Pied Piper of Hamelin Synopsis
In the first in his series of Trickster Tales, Russell Brand retells the classic children's story The Pied Piper of Hamelin with anarchic rats, arrogant townspeople, sharp-eyed Sam and of course the Pied Piper.
'Once upon a time, a mysterious time that exists through a window in your mind, a time that seemed, to those present, exactly like now does to us, except their teeth weren't so clean and more things were wooden, there was a town called Hamelin ...'
Welcome to Russell Brand's Hamelin. A pompous and ugly town, where the grown-ups are all stuck up their own backsides and their greedy, bum-scratching offspring are usually squirrelling up their own noses. When a badass band of anarchic rats descends on this bombastic bunch, there's only one man for the job: the wise and wily Pied Piper. You'll be enchanted and revolted in equal measure by the host of characters you meet along the way and all brought to life in Brand's inimitable style and with the illustrations of Costa Award-winner Chris Riddell.
An actor, comedian, radio host and writer, Russell Brand is an international phenomenon. As well as starring in movies such as Get Me to the Greek, Forgetting Sarah Marshall and Despicable Me, he is also the author of four books including the Sunday Times bestselling memoir My Booky Wook.
In 2011 Brand was awarded the Outstanding Contribution to Comedy Award at the British Comedy Awards. He toured his most recent stand-up show The Messiah Complex worldwide. He regularly writes for the Guardian and recently guest-edited an issue of the New Statesman.
