Synopsis
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...
The Washington Post - Ron Charles
Remember that kid in middle school who sat off by himself during lunch reciting Monty Python skits? You must track him down (parents' house: basement) and send him a copy of Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey. This insanely clever novel…sounds like a cult classic for people who crave a rich brew of dystopic fantasy and deadpan goofiness. Shifting away from his postmodern literary parodies…Fforde has now created his most original story, an elaborate social satire about a weird but oddly familiar world almost 500 years in the future…Lewis Carroll madness tinted with steampunk. The palette of Fforde's comedy is immense.