Tom Sharpe (born March 30, 1928) is an English satirical author, born in London and educated at Lancing College and at Pembroke College, Cambridge. After National Service he moved to South Africa in 1951, doing social work and teaching in Natal, until deported in 1961.

His work in South Africa inspired the novels Riotous Assembly and Indecent Exposure. From 1963 until 1972 he was a History lecturer at the Cambridge College of Arts and Technology , which inspired his trilogy Wilt , The Wilt Alternative and Wilt on High.

His novels feature bitter and outrageous satire of, inter alia, the apartheid regime (Riotous Assembly and its sequel Indecent Exposure), dumbed-down education (the Wilt trilogy), British class snobbery (Ancestral Vices, Porterhouse Blue), the literary world (The Great Pursuit), political extremists of all stripes, political correctness, bureaucracy and stupidity in general. Characters may indulge in bizarre sexual practices, and coarser characters use very graphic and/or profane language in dialogue. In more printable passages, Sharpe often parodies the language and style of specific authors commonly associated with the social group held up for ridicule. Readers tend to find Sharpe's work either extremely offensive or outrageously funny.

Sharpe's bestselling books have been translated into many languages. A fourth volume in the Wilt series (Wilt in Nowhere) is due to be released in 2004.

Porterhouse Blue and Blott on the Landscape were turned into television series in 1985 and 1987, respectively. A film of Wilt was made in 1989.

Bibliography

• Riotous Assembly (1971)
• Indecent Exposure (1973)
• Porterhouse Blue (1974)
• Blott on the Landscape (1975)
• Wilt (1976)
• The Great Pursuit (1977)
• The Throwback (1978)
• The Wilt Alternative (1979)
• Ancestral Vices (1980)
• Vintage Stuff (1983)
• Wilt on High (1985)
• Grantchester Grind (1995)
• The Midden (1996)
• Wilt Omnibus (1996)
• Wilt in Nowhere (2004)