Will Self - Böcker

The Book of Dave is Booker-shortlisted author Will Self's dazzling sixth novel What if a demented London cabbie called Dave Rudman wrote a book to his estranged son to give him some fatherly advice? What if that book was buried in Hampstead and hundreds of years later, when rising sea levels have put London underwater, spawned a religion? What if one man decided to question life according to Dave? And what if Dave had indeed made a mistake?Shuttling between the recent past and a far-off future where England is terribly altered, The Book of Dave is a strange and troubling mirror held up to our times: disturbing, satirizing and vilifying who and what we think we are. At once a meditation upon the nature of received religion, a love story, a caustic satire of contemporary urban life and a historical detective story set in the far future - this compulsive novel will be enjoyed by readers everywhere, including fans of Martin Amis and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange.'Vivid, visceral and breathtakingly ambitious, this is Self's best yet' GQ'Mindboggling ... darkly hilarious ... A fascinating book' Evening StandardWill Self is the author of nine novels including Cock and Bull; My Idea of Fun; Great Apes; How the Dead Live; Dorian, an Imitation; The Book of Dave; The Butt; Walking to Hollywood and Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has written five collections of shorter fiction and three novellas: The Quantity Theory of Insanity; Grey Area; License to Hug; The Sweet Smell of Psychosis; Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo; Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys; Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe and Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes. Self has also compiled a number of nonfiction works, including The Undivided Self: Selected Stories; Junk Mail; Perfidious Man; Sore Sites; Feeding Frenzy; Psychogeography; Psycho Too and The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker.

Dorian - Will Self's brilliant 'imitation' of Oscar Wilde's original tainted love story 'Brutal, savage, infinitely readable' Observer'Chilling, hysterical, tasteless and haunting. A Gothic thriller complementing and enriching its original' Independent on SundayIn the summer of 1981, aristocratic, drug-addicted Henry Wooten and Warhol-acolyte Baz Hallward meet Dorian Gray. Dorian is a golden adonis - perfect, pure and (so far) deliciously uncorrupted. The subject of Baz's video installation, Cathode Narcissus, and the object of Henry's attentions, Dorian is launched on a hedonistic binge that spans the '80s and '90s. But as Baz and Henry succumb to the disease du jour, how is it that Dorian, despite all his sexual and narcotic debauchery, remains so unsullied - so vibrantly alive?'A book that filled its first reviewers with "the odour of moral and spiritual putrefaction" just got smellier, darker and funnier' ObserverDorian will be adored by fans of Will Self and Martin Amis and is an essential read for those who enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray.Will Self is the author of nine novels including Cock and Bull; My Idea of Fun; Great Apes; How the Dead Live; Dorian, an Imitation; The Book of Dave; The Butt; Walking to Hollywood and Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has written five collections of shorter fiction and three novellas: The Quantity Theory of Insanity; Grey Area; License to Hug; The Sweet Smell of Psychosis; Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo; Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys; Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe and Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes. Self has also compiled a number of nonfiction works, including The Undivided Self: Selected Stories; Junk Mail; Perfidious Man; Sore Sites; Feeding Frenzy; Psychogeography; Psycho Too and The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker.

'Darkly angelic prose... a joy to read, with the final part in particular recalling David Foster Wallace at his best' Alex Preston, Observer________________________________Will's mother's hokey homily, Waste not, want not... hisses in his ears as he oscillates furiously on the spot, havering on the threshold between the bedroom and the dying one... all the while cradling the plastic leech of the syringe in the crook of his arm. Oscillating furiously, and, as he'd presses the plunger home a touch more... and more, he hears it again and again: Waaaste nooot, waaant nooot..! whooshing into and out of him, while the blackness wells up at the periphery of his vision, and his hackneyed heart begins to beat out weirdly arrhythmic drum fills - even hitting the occasional rim-shot on his resonating rib cage. He waits, paralysed, acutely conscious, that were he simply to press his thumb right home, it'll be a cartoonish death: That's all folks! as the aperture screws shut forever.________________________________________'Self's writing has the same technicolour velocity, malign comedy as his best novels' Evening Standard 'Refreshing . . . Self is never happier than when frolicking in the hinterland between sincerity and performative, winking hyperbole' TLS

A large-format, signed Collector’s Edition of this literary and artistic meditation on the theme of night travel from two of our greatest contemporary creative talents.‘The moon drives everyone mad – you know that, well enough. But this is no lycanthropic or otherwise spooky metamorphosis: it’s far stranger than that…’ When Quentin Blake embarked on creating a set of new drawings on fantasies of travel, even he had not envisaged a series so sombre, so haunting, as Moonlight Travellers. These watercolour journeys through unknown landscapes capture, with unmatched skill, all the mystery and intrigue of the dead of night. A unique collaboration, this book brings Blake’s macabre wit into dialogue with the imaginative insight of Will Self. With characteristic sharpness, Self mingles fiction, fact and flights of memory to transport the reader on a radical tour of Blake’s mysterious lands. In Moonlight Travellers, two creative minds at the height of their powers connect word and image, darkness and light with our deepest sensibilities. In eight-wheeled contraptions and winged machines, they carry us on a trail of dreamlike journeys. After all, ‘there’s nothing more prosaic – at least, at this end of human history – than a car journey.’ This Collector’s Edition includes:• Moonlight Travellers book• Signed by Quentin Blake• Bound in full cloth, printed with a design by the artist in silver blocking • Presented in a black moon crater effect slipcase• 47 illustrations• 106 pp• 28 cm x 21.5 cm

It looks like it is going to be quite a Christmas for Richard Hermes, a Christmas powdered with cocaine and whining with the white noise of urban derangement. Not so much enfolded, as trapped in the bosom of the nastiest, most venal media clique in London, Richard is losing it on all fronts.

When Tom Brodzinski finally decides to give up smoking during a family holiday in a weird, unnamed land, a moment's inattention becomes his undoing. Flipping the butt of his last cigarette off the balcony of the holiday apartment, it lands on the head of the elderly Reggie Lincoln, and burns him. Despite Brodzinski's liberal attitudes and good intentions, the local authorities treat his action as an assault. Soon the full weight of the courts and tribal custom is brought to bear. What follows is a journey through a fantastically distorted world, a country that is part Australia, part Iraq and entirely the heart of distinctively modern darkness.

When artist Simon Dykes wakes after a late night of routine debauchery, he discovers that his world has changed beyond recognition. His girlfriend, Sarah, has turned into a chimpanzee. And, to Simon's appalled surprise, so has the rest of humanity. Simon, under the bizarre delusion that he is ‘human', is confined to an emergency psychiatric ward. There he becomes of considerable interest to eminent psychologist and chimp, Dr Zack Busner. For with this fascinating case, Busner thinks may finally make his reputation as a truly great ape.

Carol, the heroine of Cock, is extremely dissatisfied with her married life. Realisation that her husband Dan is not the man for her has come too late and insult follows injury as Dan's drinking problem gives way to an obsessive fervour for Alcoholics Anonymous. One evening while Dan is out, Carol discovers something entirely unexpected about herself that leads her into rather twisted and distinctly uncharted waters ... On the flip side, there is Bull. John Bull is a man's man. A rugby player, a drinker. He's also about to wake up to something of an anatomical surprise, a surprise that his doctor seems to be much more interested in than is entirely proper ...

When the young Ian Wharton first meets Mr Broadhurst, he is completely unaware of the influence he will come to exert over his life as ‘The Fat Controller' - a constant companion and confidant and also the obese, erudite manifestation of Ian's mental illness. As Ian's idea of fun becomes increasingly extreme, the reader is taken to a place where morality is eroded by the dull grind of modernity and everything becomes admissable.

The fictional world of Will Self is unlike any other. In The Quantity Theory of Insanity, we learn, amongst other things, the dark and terrible secret of Ward 9, why you are right to think that London is full of dead people and that each and every human being is caught up in a colossal balancing act between the sane and the insane ... The Quantity Theory of Insanity is acerbic, satirical, hilarious and, most of all, utterly unique in imaginative vision.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2012For half a century Audrey Death has been in a state of semi-consciousness. Severed from the world of the living after falling victim to Encephalitis lethargica, she has languished in Friern Barnet Mental Hospital. Then, in 1971, maverick psychiatrist Dr Zack Busner arrives.Audrey’s experiences of a bygone Edwardian London: her socialist lover, her involvement with the Suffragists, and her work in a munitions factory during the First World War, alternate with Dr Busner’s attempts to bring her back to life with a new and powerful drug. His investigations lead to revelations that are both shocking and tragic, and which will return to haunt him decades later.

This collection of short stories explores the "muddy foreshore and abysmal depths" of the human psyche. "Caring, Sharing" envisages a realm where adults can be the children they really are, while "The Nonce Prize" presents a chilling portrait of a man who has been framed as a child abuser.

'Will Self may not be the last modernist at work but at the moment he's the most fascinating of the tradition's torch bearers.' New YorkFrom one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed 'the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation' by the Guardian, Will Self's Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, to the Australian outback and to literary forms past and future. With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf, Kafka, Orwell and Conrad. He writes movingly on W.G. Sebald's childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughs's Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask readers how, what and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Whether he is writing on the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the nineteenth century or on the impossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online, Self's trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humour infuse every piece.

Nicola Hicks’s sculpture and drawing practice has focused upon heroic, humanized animals and mythic, beast-like humans. From the moment she burst on the wider public stage, there has been no doubting her remarkable talent. Picked out while still at the Royal College of Art by the late Elisabeth Frink as a fellow spirit, she quickly established an immediate presence among the artists of her generation as a serious and substantial figure. She was remarkable on every count, for she flew in the face of the critical expectations of the day, not just in the nature of the actual imagery she celebrated — figurative, romantic and expressive — but also in the direct and gleeful joy she took in the physical making of these things. This book is a visual celebration of her work and features essays written by Will Self, Max Porter, Candia McWilliam and David Mamet. Keep Dark is published by Elephant in association with Flowers Gallery.

Originally a novel by Will Self, Great Apes is a hilarious, disturbing and dazzlingly original take on man’s place in the evolutionary chain.When Turner Prize-winning artist Simon Dykes wakes up one morning after a wild night out, he finds his world has changed beyond recognition. His girlfriend, Sarah, has turned into a chimpanzee. And to his horror, so has everyone else. Immediately rushed to hospital, Simon is taken into the care of charismatic radical psychiatrist Zack Busner and treated for being under the psychotic delusion that he’s human.This raucous new stage adaptation from Patrick Marmion (The Divided Laing) mixes razor-sharp language with movement and puppetry, journeying into the mystery of what it means to be a human being.

A fascinating and unsettling anthology of 32 science fiction short stories in tribute to the prophetic dystopias of New Wave sci-fi pioneer, and literary titan of the twentieth century, J. G. Ballard-featuring Will Self, Iain Sinclair, Christopher Fowler, Chris Beckett, and a new Jerry Cornelius story from Michael Moorcock.Few authors are so iconic that their name is an adjective - Ballard is one of them.Master of both literary and science fiction, his novels such as Empire of the Sun, Crash and Cocaine Nights show a world out of joint - a bewildering, alienating and yet enthralling place. From his rapturously weird takes on contemporary reality to his classic dystopias like The Drowned World and High Rise, Ballard's legacy shaped the future of literature. This first-of-its-kind anthology, featuring our greatest literary and science fiction authors, including the pioneering Will Self, pays tribute to the unique visions of humanity's uncanny and uneasy clash with the future - our empires of concrete - seen through the warped lens of J. G. Ballard.Edited by renowned editors Maxim Jakubowski and Rick McGrath, this collection includes stories by:Will SelfIain SinclairChristopher FowlerChris BeckettMichael MoorcockJeff NoonPreston GrassmannToby LittChristine PoulsonDavid GordonHanna JamesonJames LovegroveRamsey CampbellBarry N. MalzbergPaul Di FilippoSamathan Lee HoweNick MamatasAdrian McKintyRhys HughesAdrian ColePat CadiganAdam RobertsGeorge SandisonGeoff NicholsonA.K. BenedictAndrew HookDavid QuantickLavie TidharJames Grady