Unseen Academicals

You've never seen football like this before!

Get into the World Cup spirit with the gloriously inventive and funny fantasy novel from bestselling author Terry Pratchett. A limited edition paperback in partnership with the National Year of Reading 2026.

'This isn't just football, it's Discworld football. Or, to borrow another phrase, it's about life, the Universe and everything' The Times

‘Another brilliant and funny book from a master storyteller’ 5-star reader review

In the magical city of Ankh-Morpork, the beautiful game is about to get really ugly. . .

The wizards of Unseen University are trading their spell books for football books and have to win a match without using any magic. . . so they're going to try everything else.

To do this, they recruit an unlikely group of players: Trev, a street urchin with a talent for kicking a tin can; Glenda, the night chef who makes a mean pie; Juliet, the kitchen hand turned world's greatest fashion model; and the mysterious Mr Nutt, who has something powerful, and dark, locked away inside him . . .

And the thing about football - the important thing about football - is that it is not just about football. Here we go, here we go, here we go!

Unseen Academicals is part of the Discworld series, which can be read in any order. If you liked Unseen Academicals, try the rest of the Wizards books!

Praise for the Discworld series:

'One of our greatest fantasists, and beyond a doubt the funniest' George R.R. Martin

‘One of the most consistently funny writers around’ Ben Aaronovitch

‘Pratchett is a master storyteller’ Guardian

'[Pratchett’s] spectacular inventiveness makes the Discworld series one of the perennial joys of modern fiction'Mail on Sunday

'One of those rare writers who appeals to everyone’ Daily Express

‘Masterful and brilliant’ Fantasy & Science Fiction

‘Pratchett uses his other world to hold up a distorting mirror to our own… he is a satirist of enormous talent ... incredibly funny ... compulsively readable'The Times

‘The best humorous English author since P.G. Wodehouse' The Sunday Telegraph

‘Nothing short of magical’ Chicago Tribune

'Consistently funny, consistently clever and consistently surprising in its twists and turns' SFX

‘[Discworld is] compulsively readable, fantastically inventive, surprisingly serious exploration in story form of just about any aspect of our world…There's never been anything quite like it’ Evening Standard