Description:

The New York Times bestseller and “a rich brew of dystopic fantasy and deadpan goofiness” ( The Washington Post ) from the author of the Thursday Next series and Early Riser

Welcome to Chromatacia, where the societal hierarchy is strictly regulated by one's limited color perception. And Eddie Russet wants to move up. But his plans to leverage his better-than-average red perception and marry into a powerful family are quickly upended. Juggling inviolable rules, sneaky Yellows, and a risky friendship with an intriguing Grey named Jane who shows Eddie that the apparent peace of his world is as much an illusion as color itself, Eddie finds he must reckon with the cruel regime behind this gaily painted façade.

An astonishing, hotly anticipated new novel from the great literary fantasist and creator of Thursday Next, Jasper Fforde. As long as anyone can remember, society has been ruled by a Colortocracy. From the underground feedpipes that keep the municipal park green to the healing hues viewed to cure illness to a social hierarchy based upon one's limited color perception, society is dominated by color. In this world, you are what you can see. Young Eddie Russett has no ambition to be anything other than a loyal drone of the Collective. With his better-than-average red perception, he could well marry Constance Oxblood and inherit the string works; he may even have enough red perception to make prefect. For Eddie, life looks colorful. Life looks good. But everything changes when he moves with his father, a respected swatchman, to East Carmine. There, he falls in love with a Grey named Jane who opens his eyes to the painful truth behind his seemingly perfect, rigidly controlled society. Curiosity--a dangerous trait to display in a society that demands total conformity--gets the better of Eddie, who beings to wonder: Why are there not enough spoons to go around? Why is everything--and everyone--barcoded? What happened to all the people who never returned from High Saffron? And why, when you begin to question the world around you, do black-and- white certainties reduce themselves to shades of grey? Part satire, part romance, part revolutionary thriller, this is the new world from the creative and comic genius of Jasper Fforde.