Mort
Mort is a Discworld novel by Terry Pratchett. Published in 1987, it is the fourth Discworld novel and the first to focus on the character Death, who only appeared as a side character in the previous novels. The title is the name of its main character and also a play on words: in French, mort means "death", so the French language edition is titled Mortimer.
In the BBC's 2003 Big Read contest, viewers voted on the "Nation's Best-loved Book"; Mort was among the Top 100 and chosen as the most popular of Pratchett's novels.
Plot summary
As a teenager, Mort has a personality and temperament that makes him unsuited to the family farming business. Mort's father Lezek takes him to a local hiring fair in the hope that Mort will land an apprenticeship; not only would this provide a job for his son, but it would also make his son's propensity for thinking into someone else's problem.
At the job fair, Mort at first has no luck attracting the interest of an employer, but just before the stroke of midnight, a man wearing a black cloak arrives on a white horse, saying that he is looking for a young man to assist him in his work and selects Mort for the job. The man turns out to be Death, and Mort is given an apprenticeship in ushering souls into the next world (though his father thinks he's been apprenticed to an undertaker).