Will Self, Author Atlantic Monthly Press $20 (310p) ISBN 978-0-87113-531-5
Issues of gender identity move from the philosophical to the physical realm in these two racy, startingly inventive novellas of genital anomaly set in contemporary London. ``Cock'' introduces Carol, a dissatisfied housewife who, while coping with...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self. Grove, $27 (624p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2537-8
In the hefty stream-of-consciousness conclusion to Self’s ambitious trilogy (Umbrella, Shark), disconnected narratives collide, bringing long-hidden secrets to light. Zachary Busner, a retired psychiatrist, embarks on a spiritual journey that...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self. Grove, $26 (480p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2310-7
After declaring the novel dead in May in his Guardian article “The Novel Is Dead (This Time It’s For Real),” Self returns with a new novel, and it is a maddening, uncompromising, serious, self-indulgent, and beautiful work. The second book in a...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self. Grove, $25 (448p) ISBN 978-0-8021-2072-4
Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, Self’s sweeping experimental new novel (after Walking to Hollywood) creaks under the weight of chaotic complexity. At its core lies a fractured matrix only partially resembling a coherent story. For more than 50
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Grove, $24.95 (448p) ISBN 978-0-8021-1972-8
Set in England and Hollywood, Self's latest (after The Butt) is a rollicking and clever ramble through contemporary culture filtered through a twisted imagination. The protagonist, much like the author, is a neurotic British writer named Will Self...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author Grove/Atlantic $24 (416p) ISBN 978-0-8021-1671-0
HScathingly satiric and prophetic, this unsettling novel by Great Apes author Self will inevitably inspire comparison with Martin Amis's era-defining London Fields. Running on a vatic rage that is almost Swiftian in the totality of its objectDthe...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author Grove/Atlantic $23 (256p) ISBN 978-0-8021-1644-4
Although the title piece in this collection of eight stories by the ever-inventive Self (Great Apes, etc.) is uncharacteristically realistic, in many others Self's signature surreality, inventive wordplay and altered states of consciousness conspire
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author Grove/Atlantic $24 (416p) ISBN 978-0-8021-1617-8
The usual charges of misanthropy against Self (My Idea of Fun) don't quite apply to this over-the-top evolutionary satire, since it is populated entirely by chimpanzees. The only partial exception is Simon Dykes, the now-divorced avant-garde artist...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author Atlantic Monthly Press $22 (0p) ISBN 978-0-87113-620-6
Once again bringing piercing wit and narrative virtuosity to the short-story form, Self (The Quantity Theory of Insanity) lays into contemporary England. The title story in this sophisticated collection depicts the drab, unchanging world of a...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author Atlantic Monthly Press $21 (211p) ISBN 978-0-87113-585-8
With its U.K. publication in 1991, this collection of six morbidly funny stories of Thatcherite Britain secured Self's standing as the enfant terrible of English satirical fiction. As in last year's My Idea of Fun, Self's parodic style here hinges...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author Atlantic Monthly Press $21 (309p) ISBN 978-0-87113-565-0
Employing vivid, jarringly unsavory imagery, richly erudite diction and a persuasive, engaging narrative voice, British novella and short-story writer Self ( Cock & Bull ) explores the elusiveness of reality and self-knowledge, the power of...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author . Grove $23 (288p) ISBN 978-0-8021-1729-8
In this retelling of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, most of the original's characters are cleverly transmuted into their late-20th-century counterparts: dissolute Henry Wotton, now openly homosexual with a nasty heroin habit; his...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author Vintage Books USA $13 (320p) ISBN 978-0-679-75092-5
Two bitingly erudite and absurdist novellas describe characters who suddenly sprout the genitalia of the opposite sex. (Apr.)
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author Vintage Books USA $13.95 (224p) ISBN 978-0-679-75094-9
British satirist Self presents six stories mixing the grotesque with the cerebral. (Mar.)
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author . Bloomsbury $26 (276p) ISBN 978-1-59691-664-7
The reliably diabolical Self delivers four longish stories about decay, debauchery and deliverance, each at least tangentially related to London's Plantation Club. In “Foie Humain,” the Plantation Club is revealed to be a Soho...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author . Bloomsbury $25 (355p) ISBN 978-1-59691-555-8
From Self, the British master of the satirical fantasy, comes a loquacious and inventive farce about the demise of civilization. Tom Brodzinski, relaxing on vacation in the postcolonial Feltham Islands, sets off a string of unfortunate events when...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author . Bloomsbury $24.95 (495p) ISBN 978-1-59691-123-9
Self, the provocative British raconteur who used the Tibetan Book of the Dead
to map London (How the Dead Live
, 2000) is taking another literary shot across his home city's bow. In his gleaming new puzzlebook, Self creates a dystopian future...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author . Grove/Black Cat $13 (308p) ISBN 978-0-8021-7023-1
This uneven catchall for a decade's worth of previously published critiques, interviews and essays by British novelist Self (The Quantity Theory of Insanity
) roams from "ultimate rock chick" Marianne Faithfull to avant-garde artist...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author, Martin Rowson, Illustrator Grove Press $11 (96p) ISBN 978-0-8021-3647-3
British author Self (Cock & Bull; My Idea of Fun) is notorious for extremes of debauchery, and in his newest tale of one man's descent into vice and excess he teams up with political cartoonist Rawson, who provides sinister, nightmarish...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author, Ralph Steadman, Illustrator . Bloomsbury $35 (255p) ISBN 978-1-60819-022-5
The travel essays and fantasias in this raucous sequel to Psychogeography
register the psychic impact of place while mapping out the author's idiosyncratic mental terrain. Novelist Self views his surroundings through the lens of his gripes,...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self, Author, Ralph Steadman, Illustrator , illustrated by Ralph Steadman. Bloomsbury $34.95 (255p) ISBN 978-1-59691-466-7
This artful and entertaining collection of essays by novelist Self (The Book of Dave
) will delight anyone who enjoys his weekly column of the same name in the Independent
or his last collection of essays, Feeding Frenzy
. Here Self shifts from...
READ FULL REVIEW
Will Self. Grove, $26 (336p) ISBN 978-0-80216-024-9
Two decades of essays and lectures on literature come together in this idiosyncratic volume from Self (Will). In answering the question posed by the title essay, which was published on the website Literary Hub in 2021, he writes “read because short...
READ FULL REVIEW
ARTICLES
