Will Self

Will Self may not be the last modernist at work but at the moment hes the most fascinating of the traditions 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 Selfs 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. Sebalds childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughss 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, Selfs trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humour infuse every piece.

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.

Scabrous, vicious and unpleasant in life, Lily Bloom has not been improved by death. She has changed addresses, of course, and now inhabits a basement flat in Dulston - Londons borough for those no longer troubled by breathing - but if anything her temperament has worsened.

WHATEVER YOU DO hang on to the phone. . . . . . . . ! . . . . . . . . ! Feel the smoothness of its bevelled screen . . . . . . . . ! . . . . . . . . ! Place your thumb in the soft depression of its belly-button - turn it over and over. . . . . . . . ! . . . . . . . . ! A five hundred-quid worry bead - and all I worry about is losing the bloody thing. . . . . . . . ! . . . . . . . . !For the four characters at the heart of Will Selfs brilliantly acute novel of our times the five hundred-quid worry bead in their pocket may be both a blessing and a curse. For elderly Dr Zachary Busner it is a mysterious object - NO CALLER ID - How should this be interpreted? Is it that the caller is devoid of an identity due to some psychological or physical trauma? - but also its his life line to his autistic grandson Ben, whose own connection with technology is, in turn, a vital one.For Jonathan DeAth , aka the Butcher, MI6 agent, the phone may reveal his best kept secret of all: that Colonel Gawain Thomas, husband, father, and highly-trained tank commander - is Jonathan s long time lover. And when technology, love and violence finally converge in the wreckage of postwar Iraq, the Colonel and the Spys dalliance will determi

In the summer of 1981, aristocratic, drug-addicted Henry Wooten and Warhol-acolyte Baz Hallward meet Dorian Gray. Dorian is a golden adonis - perfect, and deliciously uncorrupted. The subject of Bazs video installation, Cathode Narcissus, and the object of Henrys attentions, Dorian is launched on a hedonistic binge that spans the 80s and 90s.

«Una alegoría feroz, una parábola de los ritos de la imaginación» (Elizabeth Young, New Statesman). lan Wharton es un brillante ejecutivo inglés de treinta y pocos años y su idea de la diversión es t

Shark turns upon an actual incident in WWII - mentioned in the film Jaws - when the ship which had delivered the fissile material to the south Pacific to be dropped on Hiroshima was subsequently sunk by a Japanese submarine with the loss of 900 men, including 200 killed in the largest shark attack ever recorded. When the Creep, an American resident in the 1970s at the therapeutic community in north London supervised by maverick psychiatrist Zack Busner, starts to tell rambling stories of thrashing about in the water while under attack from sharks, Busner has to decide whether they are schizoid delusions or some sort of reality.

Shark turns upon an actual incident in WWII - mentioned in the film Jaws - when the ship which had delivered the fissile material to the south Pacific to be dropped on Hiroshima was subsequently sunk by a Japanese submarine with the loss of 900 men, including 200 killed in the largest shark attack ever recorded. When the Creep, an American resident in the 1970s at the therapeutic community in north London supervised by maverick psychiatrist Zack Busner, starts to tell rambling stories of thrashing about in the water while under attack from sharks, Busner has to decide whether they are schizoid delusions or some sort of reality.

Dos disparatadas metamorfosis, narradas con gran dominio narrativo y altas dosis de humor negro, que cuestionan sin eludir la polémica las diferencias entre los sexos. Un ama de casa insatisfecha, con un marido alcoholico que en su juventud le proporciono el primer y unico orgasmo de su vida, recurre a la masturbacion para tratar de dar algo de color a su pauperrima sexualidad... y descubre que le esta empezando a crecer un pene. Un periodista fracasado, entusiasta del rugby y buen bebedor de cerveza se percata un buen dia de que en su cuerpo ha aparecido una vagina, por lo que acude de inmediato a su medico que, fascinado, se lanza a seducir al paciente...En dos novelas cortas y complementarias Will Self nos propone dos disparatadas metamorfosis, narradas con gran dominio narrativo y altas dosis de humor negro, que cuestionan sin eludir la polemica las diferencias entre los sexos. Un libro delirante, salvaje, perturbador y francamente divertido, una de las propuestas mas sorprendentes de los ultimos tiempos.

En esta colección de cuatro piezas conectadas como cuatro lóulos hepáticos, el higado es la estrella de un sisteam destinado a estrellarse. Algo te come el hígado, el hígado se come en pedacitos, e una sopa o como improvisadas galletas para perros. El higado se engorda como un ganso en la campiña francesa, para ser devorado finalmente como una delicatessen de la especie, destinada al consumo de otra especie infiltrada entre nosotros. Hace 30 años que Will Self es moderno, si la mdoerndiad es un proyecto inconcluso especialziado en desesperarnos, en asestarnos el slapstick de la adiccion

Tom Brodzinski is a man who takes his own good intentions for granted. But when he finally decides to give up smoking, a moment''s inattention to detail becomes his undoing. Flipping the butt of his final cigarette off the balcony of the holiday apartment he''s renting with his family, Tom is appalled when it lands on the head of one his fellow countrymen, Reggie Lincoln. The elderly Lincoln is badly burnt, and since the cigarette butt passed through public space before hitting him, the local authorities are obliged to regard Tom''s action as an assault, despite his benign intentions. Worse is to follow: Lincoln is married to a native from one of the rigorous, mystical tribes of the desert interior, and their customary law is incorporated into the civil statute. In order to make reparations to Mrs Lincoln''s people, Tom will have to leave his family behind, and carry the appropriate goods and chattels deep into the arid heart of this strange, island continent. Any of this might be bearable, were it not for Tom''s companion, forced on him by his enigmatic lawyer, the mixed-race Jethro Swai-Phillips.Brian Prentice, like Tom, has to make reparations and although there is a taboo that prevents either man from knowing the exact detail of the other''s offence, Tom''s almost 100% certain that he''s a child-abuser. As they drive into the desert and encounter a violent counter-insurgency war that Tom has allowed himself to remain in ignorance of, the relationship between the two men becomes one of complicit guilt as well as seething mistrust. Refusing facile moral certitudes, Will Self''s latest novel is set in a distorted world, in a country that is part Australia, part Iraq, part Greeneland and part the heart of a distinctively modern darkness.

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?