Thursday Next

Thursday Next is the protagonist in the series of novels by Jasper Fforde. Thursday is living in a parallel universe, in which England has fighting the Crimean War for more than a hundred years with a Russia that still has a Tzar and in which Wales has left the Commonwealth as an independent People's Republic Of Wales. In the world of Thursday Next, literature is considered as the greatest national treasure and has to be protected against evil doers.

Related Topics:
Protagonist - Novel - Jasper Fforde - Parallel universe - Crimean War - Russia - Tzar - Wales

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Thursday is an agent with the Swindon SpecOps department 27, Literary Detectives, which means she investigates cases that seem rather bizarre but are perfectly normal in this parallel world like book trafficking, plot line changes etc. The Shakespeare Division (SO-29) broke away from SO-27 to deal solely with Baconian uprisings and Marlowe fans, fake copies of lost plays, among other Shakespearean disturbances. Thursday moves between her work in Swindon and the world of fiction, battling the machinations of the Goliath Corporation and other evils at every turn.

Related Topics:
Swindon - Parallel world - Shakespeare

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Thursday is in her mid-thirties at the start of the first book, she is sometimes married to Landen Parke-Laine. Her biographer, Millon de Floss, reveals more about her life at the beginnings of chapters in The Eyre Affair, Lost in a Good Book, The Well of Lost Plots and Something Rotten. Her father Colonel Next is a rogue member of the Chronoguard, or time police, who is at large throughout the time-space continuum but still frequently finds time to visit Thursday, usually by stopping time around her so they can talk without her father being arrested by the Chronoguard. She has two brothers, Anton, who died in the Crimean War, and Joffy, who is a minister for the Global Standard Deity (GSD).

Related Topics:
Landen Parke-Laine - The Eyre Affair - Lost in a Good Book - The Well of Lost Plots - Something Rotten - Crimean War

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Thursday also has a pet dodo called Pickwick. Although dodos had been extinct for some time, in Fforde's fictional universe they have been reintroduced through cloning, a popular hobby. Pickwick was 12 in 1985, when The Eyre Affair is set, and was one of the first created, and has some unusual characteristics, including the fact that she is missing wings. She is a version 1.2 Dodo, and the DNA sequencing wasn't complete until the release of 1.7. Although initially Thursday Next believed Pickwick to be male, she later turned out to be female when she laid an egg. She frequently makes a noise which is represented as plock plock in the books.

Related Topics:
Dodo - Cloning - 1985 - The Eyre Affair

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Around Thursday Next a fictional world has been created, reflected in several websites of the fictional organisations.

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