I love the quotation at the end of this:

------------------------------------------------------------

It's the birthday of novelist Tom Sharpe, born in London (1928). He's written more than a dozen satirical novels, attacking everything from politicians to publishers. After graduating from Cambridge, he spent twenty years in South Africa, working as a photographer and teacher. He wrote nine plays during his time there, but only one of them was produced, The South African. After its first performances in London, Sharpe was imprisoned and deported by South African authorities. He's spent the rest of his life teaching and writing in England.

His first two novels, Riotous Assembly (1971) and Indecent Exposure (1973), ridicule the South African police force and point out the absurdities of life under apartheid. He wrote in Riotous Assembly, "There didn't seem to be any significant difference between life in the mental hospital and life in South Africa as a whole. Black madmen did all the work, while white lunatics lounged about imagining they were God."