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Terry Pratchett The Discworld series 29th novel – 6th City Watch story
Outline
Characters:	Ankh-Morpork City Watch Samuel Vimes and Lu Tze.
Locations:	Ankh-Morpork
Motifs:	Time travel, cop novels, Revolutions
Publication details
Year of release:	2002
Original publisher:	Doubleday
Hardback ISBN:	ISBN 0-385-60264-2
Paperback ISBN:	ISBN 0-06-001312-5
Other details
Awards:	Prometheus Award, 2003
Notes:	Came 73rd in the Big Read.

Night Watch is the 29th novel in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, published in 2002. The protagonist 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. This is the first main-sequence Discworld novel not to have a cover by Josh Kirby. Kidby pays tribute to the late artist by placing him in the picture, in the position where Rembrandt painted himself. The actual painting by Rembrandt is used as the back cover illustration.

Night Watch features a secret police force (the "Unmentionables") that terrorizes the city's populace. A great deal of the plot is inspired by civil uprisings like the Revolutions of 1848, the Paris Commune of 1871, the Swing Riots and comparable ones as depicted in Les Miserables, for example [1]. Another parallel with Les Miserables is that the main villain, Carcer Dun, claims that his crime was to have stolen a loaf of bread, as had Jean Valjean. As a parody of the eponymous musical and its clichés, the handsome revolution leader Reg Shoe/Enjolras takes impossibly long to die. The use of cavalry in city riots echoes the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, where volunteer Yeomanry Cavalry attacked a crowd of protesters in Manchester.

On the morning of the 30th anniversary of the Glorious Twenty-Fifth of May (and as such the anniversary of the death of John Keel, Vimes' hero and former mentor), Sam Vimes is caught in a magical storm while pursuing Carcer Dun, a notorious criminal. He awakens to find that he has been rescued by Miss Palm (whom Vimes knows as Mrs Palm, Head of the Guild of Seamstresses). He determines that he has somehow been sent back in time.

Vimes attempts to employ the wizards at Unseen University to send him home, but is arrested for breaking curfew by a younger version of himself. Incarcerated in a cell beside his, he finds Carcer, who after being released joins the Unmentionables, the secret police carrying out the paranoid whims of the Patrician of the time, Lord Winder.

When he is taken to be interrogated by the captain, time is frozen by Lu-Tze, who tells Vimes what has happened and that he must assume the identity of his mentor Sergeant John Keel (who was to have arrived that day but was murdered by Carcer). It is stated that the event which caused Vimes and Carcer to be sent into the past was a major temporal shattering. Vimes then returns to the office, time restarts and he convinces the captain that he is Keel.

Young Vimes believes Vimes to be Keel, allowing Vimes to teach Young Vimes the lessons for which Vimes idolised Keel. Essentially this means that Vimes taught and idolised himself, not Keel, although alternate histories and the "Trousers of Time" mean this may not be the case ("You were indeed taken under the wing of one John Keel, a watchman from Pseudopolis," says Lu Tze. "He was a real person. He was not you").

The novel climaxes in the Revolution, hinted at since the start of the book. Vimes, taking command of the watchmen, successfully avoids the major bloodshed erupting all over the city and manages to keep his part of it relatively peaceful. After dealing with the Unmentionables' headquarters he has his haphazard forces barricade a few streets to keep people safe from the fighting between rebels and soldiers. However, the barricades are gradually pushed forward during the night to encompass the surrounding streets until Vimes finds himself in control of a significant part of the city.

The ruler, Lord Winder, is assassinated by the young Assassin's Guild student Havelock Vetinari, and the new Patrician Lord Snapcase calls for a complete amnesty. However, he sees Keel as a threat and sends Carcer and the palace guard to murder the Night Watch. Several policemen (the ones who died when the barricade fell in the original timeline) are killed in the battle; Vimes manages to fight off the attack until he can grab Carcer, at which point they are returned to the future and Keel's body is placed in the timeline Vimes has just left, to tie things up, as in the "real" history, Keel died in that fight.

Vimes' son is born, with the help of Doctor 'Mossy' Lawn (whom Vimes met while in the past), and Vimes finally arrests Carcer, promising him a fair trial before he's hanged. A subsequent conversation with Lord Vetinari reveals that the Patrician knows Vimes took Keel's place. He proposes that the old Watch House at Treacle Mine Road (where Keel was sergeant, and which was destroyed by the dragon in Guards! Guards!) be rebuilt.

Some fans of Terry Pratchett, notably those involved in internet communities, have adopted the Glorious 25th of May as an unofficial holiday celebrating Pratchett's work, much like Towel Day.

• Нощна стража (Bulgarian)
• Noční hlídka (Czech)
• Ronde de nuit (French)
• Die Nachtwächter (German)
• De Nachtwacht (Dutch)

• Annotations for Night Watch
• Quotes from Night Watch