Fforde started out in the film industry from age 20, working his way up to cameraman. He is said to have received a total of 76 rejection letters before his debut The Eyre Affair, a literary detective story was published in 2001 when he was 40 years old.
In Jasper Fforde's Great Britain, circa 1985, time travel is routine, cloning is a reality (dodos are the resurrected pet of choice), and literature is taken very, very seriously. England is a virtual police state where an aunt can get lost (literally) in a Wordsworth poem and forging Byronic verse is a punishable offense. All this is business as usual for Thursday Next, renowned Special Operative in literary detection. But when someone begins kidnapping characters from works of literature and plucks Jane Eyre from the pages of Brontë's novel, Thursday is faced with the challenge of her career. Fforde's ingenious fantasy-enhanced by a Web site that re-creates the world of the novel--unites intrigue with English literature in a delightfully witty mix.
Thanks to Bustle for this tip off as they listed it in their "9 books to read if your drawn to delightfully weird characters" list"
Jasper Fforde writes weird characters almost exclusively (even when he's borrowing from the rest of the literary canon). Thursday Next herself is a literary detective with a pet dodo. Her father is a time traveler. Her friends and enemies range from reanimated neanderthals to talking gorillas to Hamlet. If you're looking for a whole gang of "out there" characters, the Thursday Next series should be high on your list.
Read more here
@ the Guardian - interview with Jasper Fforde
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