Night Watch (novel)
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Night Watch is the 28th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, published in 2002. The hero of the novel is Sir Samuel Vimes, commander of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch.
The cover illustration of the British edition, by Paul Kidby, is a parody of Rembrandt's painting Night Watch.
Night Watch makes references to the Spanish Inquisition ( the "Unmentionables") and the French Revolution.
On the morning of the 30th anniversary of the Glorious Twentyfifth of May (and as such the anniversary of the death of John Keel, Vimes' hero and former mentor), Vimes is caught in a magical explosion while pursuing Carcer, a notorious serial murderer. He awakens to find that he has been rescued by Miss Palm (whom Vimes knows as Mrs Palm). He determines that he has somehow been sent back in time.
Vimes leaves to speak to the wizards at Unseen University about returning home, but is arrested for breaking curfew at arrow-point by a young Vimes. He finds Carcer incarcerated in the cell beside his, before Carcer is released (who then joins the unmentionables, a secret police carrying out the paranoid whims of the patrician).
When he is taken up to be interrogated by the captain, time is frozen by Lu-Tze and he tells Vimes what has happened and that he must assume the identity of his mentor John Keel (who was to have arrived that day but was murdered). It is implied that the cause of Vimes going through time is that he was caught in the explosion at the same instant the glass clock struck and time froze in Thief_of_Time. Vimes then returns to the office, time restarts and he successfully convinces the captain that he is Keel.
unfinished
Night Watch translations
- Нощна стража (Bulgarian)
- Die Nachtwächter (German)
- Noční hlídka (Czech)