Books by Will Self
Will Self is the author of ten novels, five collections of shorter fiction, three novellas and five collections of non-fiction writing. His work has been translated into 22 languages, and his novel Umbrella was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize.
The Butt
by Will Self
šĀ Winner of the 2008 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
In a moment of recklessness, Tom Brodzinksi flicks his last-ever cigarette butt off a balconyāhitting a man below and setting off a surreal chain of events that will soon find him trekking through the desert hinterlands of a war-torn country. A smart, satirical, speculative novel that divided critics on its release in 2008.
“There is a genius idea in this book … what I find very funny about his central conceit is that you have this misogynistic taxi-driver called Dave who rants away and his kids have been taken into custody. He is like one of those cabbies we have all had who sound off these ignorant, opinionated views as you are stuck in the back as a captive audience. Dave writes out his rant on metal so it survives in the post-apocalyptic world. And it is found, a bit like a Dead Sea scroll, and society has organised itself around these mad opinions. So, essentially, it is a satire on religion, the way in which religious authorities seek to impose absolute meaning on ancient texts even though society is drastically different from the context in which those texts were written. It’s a hilarious idea and one that rightly pokes fun at how religious dogma, conjoined with ignorance and fear, will always seek to impose a fixed meaning on something all writers know to be true ā the impossibility of single interpretation and the inherent instability of all textual meaning.” Read more...
James Miller, Literary Scholar
Interviews with Will Self
Will Self on Literary Influences
Conventional prose fiction falls short of the mark, says English author Will Self. He tells us about his modernist novel Umbrella, what the real character of London is, and why he canāt stand the Olympics
Interviews where books by Will Self were recommended
The Best Post-Apocalyptic Novels
Do you take perverse pleasure in reading about the end of the world as we know it? Us too. Here, we’ve gathered together a selection of the best post-apocalyptic novels ever to appear onĀ Five Books to help you choose your next horrifying, exhilarating literary parlay into armageddon.
The Best Apocalyptic Novels, recommended by James Miller
British novelist James Miller recommends his choice of the best apocalyptic novels. See Also: Post Apocalyptic Books
The Funniest Books of the 21st Century
This year, to mark its 25th anniversary, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction set out to find the funniest book of the last twenty-five years. We asked comedian Tatty Macleod, one of the judges, about the process of sifting through 25 previous winners to find the funniest book of the 21st century.
