Showing results by author "Will Self" in All Categories

A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2026 A blistering, brilliant novel from the Booker-shortlisted author, elegantly reflecting his Geoffrey Faber Memorial award–winning story collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity In The Quantity Theory of Morality, Will Self ’s unconventional new...

From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, Will Self’s Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.

Some people lost their sense of proportion, others their sense of scale, but Simon Dykes, a middle-aged, successful London painter, has lost his sense of perspective in a most disturbing fashion. After a night of routine, pedestrian debauchery, traipsing from toilet to toilet, and imbibing a host of narcotics on the way, Simon wakes up cuddled in his girlfriend's loving arms. Much to his dismay, however, his girlfriend has turned into a chimpanzee.

Henry Wotton, gay, drug addicted, and husband of Batface, the irrefutably aristocratic daughter of the Duke of This or That, is at the center of a clique dedicated to dissolution. His friend Baz Hallward, an artist, has discovered a young man who is the very epitome of male beauty - Dorian Gray. His installation Cathode Narcissus captures all of Dorian's allure, and, perhaps, something else.

Written with the passion of an obsessive, Nicotine addresses a lifelong addiction, from the thrill of the first drag to the perennial last cigarette. Reflecting on his experiences as a smoker from a young age, Gregor Hens investigates the irreversible effects of nicotine on thought and patterns of behavior. He extends the conversation with other smokers to meditations on Mark Twain and Italo Svevo, the nature of habit, and the validity of hypnosis.

While making his first tours of the hospital at which he has just begun working, maverick psychiatrist Zachary Busner notices that many of the patients exhibit a strange physical tic: rapid, precise movements that they repeat over and over. One of these patients is Audrey Dearth, an elderly woman born in the slums of West London in 1890. Audrey’s memories of a bygone Edwardian London, her lovers, involvement with early feminist and socialist movements, and, in particular, her time working in an umbrella shop, alternate with Busner’s attempts to treat her condition and bring light to her clouded world.

Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys is a new collection of corkscrewed tales from the author of Great Apes. The Guardian (London) describes Will Self as "a wayward genius", and you can find out why when you observe the author's pitiless dissection of the foibles of men, women, and the Volvo 760 Turbo.

Will Self is one of Britain's best-known contemporary writers, a public intellectual whose novels have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and translated into over 20 languages. In Will, his first-ever memoir, he turns his attention fully to his own self, and in particular his addictions as a young man. An addiction memoir like no other, Will echoes the best of Self's psychedelic fiction, and is one of the most eloquent depictions of the allure of hard drugs ever written.

Welcome to the Self Advocacy Club. I am Belle, and as a lawyer, I have always advocated for others, I now want to teach you how to do that for yourself! I will be your guide and communication coach, on a mission to empower you. As a lawyer with a heart for justice and empowerment, I’m here to share the insights and skills you need to advocate for yourself and transform into the best version of yourself. Each episode is crafted to help you navigate through life’s toughest situations with grace and confidence. I’ll share strategies to tackle complex issues, making sure you’re ...

Lily Bloom is an aging American transplanted to England who has lost her battle with cancer and lies wasting away at the Royal Ear Hospital. As her two daughters lumpy Charlotte, who runs a hugely successful chain of stationery stores called Waste of Paper, and beautiful Natasha, a junkiebuzz around her and the nurses pump her full of morphine, Lily slides in and out of the present, taking us on a surreal, opinionated trip through the stages of a lifetime of lust and rage.

Will Self is one of the most important British novelists of his generation, and he is as acclaimed in the UK for his outstanding, daring journalism as he is for his fiction. Now finally available in America, Junk Mail is an original selection of pieces from Self's nonfiction and journalism that will introduce American listeners to Self as a literary journalist par excellence.

May 4th, 1970. A week earlier President Nixon has ordered American ground forces into Cambodia to pursue the Vietcong. By the end of the day four students will be shot dead by the National Guard on the grounds of Kent State University. On the other side of the Atlantic, it's a brilliant sunny morning after an April of heavy rain, and at the "Concept House" therapeutic community he has set up outside London, maverick psychiatrist Dr. Zack Busner has been tricked into joining a decidedly ill-advised LSD trip.

This collection brings together history, science, philosophy and comedy to explore our age-old search for meaning. We live in an age of self-improvement and self-examination - lifehacking, wellbeing, self-care, mindfulness retreats - but this seemingly very modern phenomenon is a pursuit that...

These are stories that delve into the modern psyche with unsettling and darkly satiric results. "Inclusion" tells the story of a doctor who is illegally testing a new antidepressant made from bee excrement. "A Short History of the English Novel" brings us face to face with a pompous publisher who is greeted at every turn by countless rejected authors.

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?

Phone tells the story of two men: Zack Busner and Jonathan De'Ath. Busner is a psychiatrist who has made his name through his unorthodox treatment of psychological damage, such as giving the controversial drug L-DOPA to patients ravaged by encephalitis, or administering LSD to World War II PTSD-sufferers. But now Busner's own mind is fraying: Alzheimer's is shredding his memory and his newest possession is a shiny smartphone given to him by his introverted grandson Ben.

It looks like it's going to be quite a Christmas for Richard Hermes, powdered with cocaine and whining with the white noise of urban derangement. Not so much enfolded as trapped in the bosom of the most venal media clique in London, Richard is losing it on all fronts: He's losing his heart to Ursula Bentley, a nubile and vacuous magazine columnist; he's in danger of losing his job at the pretentious listings magazine Rendezvous; he's losing his mind....

A British writer named Will Self goes on a quest through LA freeways and eroding English cliffs, skewering celebrity as he attempts to solve a crime: who killed the movies. A satirical novel of otherworldly proportion and literary brilliance, Walking to Hollywood is a fantastical and unforgettable trip through the unreality of our culture.

Will Self reads from his introduction to Revelation, the final book of the Bible, which prophesises the ultimate judgement of mankind in a series of allegorical visions, grisly images, and numerological predictions. According to these, empires will fall, the 'Beast' will be destroyed, and Christ will rule a new Jerusalem. The introduction is preceded by a reading from the book by Richard Holloway, former Bishop of Edinburgh.

In Craven House, among the shifting, uncertain world of the English boardinghouse, with its sad population of the shabby genteel on the way down and the eternal optimists who would never get up or on, the young Patrick Hamilton, with loving, horrified fascination, first mapped out the territory that he would make uniquely his own. Although many of Hamilton's lifelong interests are here, they are handled with a youthful brio and optimism conspicuously absent from his later work.