Will Self
1) Phone
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English
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A conclusion to the trilogy that began with Umbrella and Shark finds unorthodox psychiatrist Zack Busner struggling to manage the symptoms of advancing Alzheimer's, while enigmatic MI6 operative Jonathan De'Ath hides the truth of his affair with Gawain Thomas.
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One of the most remarkably inventive voices of his generation, author Will Self delivers a new and stunning work of fiction. In Walking to Hollywood, a British writer named Will Self goes on a quest through L. A. freeways and eroding English cliffs, skewering celebrity as he attempts to solve a crime: who killed the movies. When Will reconnects with his childhood friend, the world suddenly seems disproportionate. Sherman Oaks, scarcely three feet...
3) Will
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"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 twenty 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...
4) Umbrella
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English
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A psychiatrist at a mental hospital in a London suburb, Zachary Busner investigates a group of unconscious patients who exhibit a peculiar type of physical tic and stumbles upon a miracle drug that could save them, but the hospital has other, darker ideas.
5) Shark
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English
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In 1975, five years after being tricked into going on an ill-advised LSD trip, maverick psychiatrist Dr. Zack Busner realizes the true nature of the events that transpired on that dread-soaked day.
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One of Will Self's best-loved novels, newly reissued by Grove, The Book of Dave begins when East End cabdriver Dave Rudman's wife takes from him his only son. In response, Dave pens a savage jeremiad against the contemporary world that filters his fearful bigotry through religious mania, with a generous dose of the London cabby's unique knowledge of the sprawling city. Dave buries the book in his ex-wife's Hampstead backyard, intending it for his...
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Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys is a new collection of cork-screwed 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. Self's world is a no-funhouse of warped mirrors. A man is seduced into a misanthropically charged symbiosis with the insects infesting his cottage-he...
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From the Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella, a world-girdling collection of writings inspired by a life lived in and for literature. From 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...
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English
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What if there is only a limited amount of sanity in the world and the real reason people go mad is because somebody has to? What if a mysterious tribe in the Amazon rainforest turn out to be the most boring people on earth? What if the afterlife is nothing more than a London suburb, where the dead get new flats, new jobs, and their own telephone directory? These are the sort of truths that emerge in this collection of stories by one of England's most...
10) Dorian
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Will Self's DORIAN is a "shameless imitation" of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray that reimagines the novel in the milieu of London's early-80s art scene, which for liberated homosexuals were a golden era of sex, drugs and decadence before the AIDS epidemic struck later in the decade. It is "an age in which appearances matter more and more and more. Only the shallowest of people won't judge by them.' Young Dorian Gray, just out of school,...
11) The Butt
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English
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When Tom Brodzinksi tries to give up smoking, he inadvertently sets off a chain of events that threaten to upset the tenuous balance of peace in a not-too-distant land. When he flips the butt of his final cigarette off the balcony of his vacation apart-ment, it lands on elderly Reggie Lincoln, lounging on the balcony below. Lincoln suf-fers a burn, and the local authorities charge Tom with assault―in a country with draconian anti-smoking laws, a...
12) Grey Area
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Will Self, whom the Los Angeles Times calls "the hottest young novelist in England," demonstrates his razor-sharp wit in these nine new stories. Self's method depends upon taking an ordinary aspect of the world and then pushing it to its limit in furious absurdity. The short stories in Grey Area reflect the technical brilliance and satiric voice that have made him one of the most highly praised comic writers in a decade. These are stories that delve...
13) Junk Mail
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English
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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 readers to Self as a literary journalist par excellence. Animated by the scathing brilliance and unflinching determination to walk...
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A brief and brilliant satire of magazine hacks and fashionistas, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis shows Will Self at the top of his form. 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...
15) Great Apes
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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....
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Will Self has established himself as one of the most brilliant, daring, and inventive writers of his generation. My Idea of Fun is Will Self's highly acclaimed first novel. The story of a devilishly clever international financier/marketing wizard and his young apprentice, My Idea of Fun is both a frighteningly dark subterranean exploration of capitalism run rampant and a wickedly sharp, technically acute display of linguistic pyrotechnics that glows...
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Will Self possesses one of the greatest literary imaginations of any writer working today. How the Dead Live is his most extraordinary book yet-a novel that will challenge, entertain, and truly astonish. 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...
18) Cock and Bull
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'Cock: A Novelette' is the story of a woman who grows a fully functional penis. 'Bull: A Farce' is the story of a man who acquires a vagina and all its companion parts. There are, however, complications. Cock & Bull, the book that introduced an enfant terrible of English letters to an American audience, has quickly become a classic of blistering satire.
19) Liver
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In this collection of four linked stories, newly reissued by Grove, Will Self takes aim at the disease and decay that target the largest of human organs: the liver. Set in locales as toxic as a London drinking club and mundane as a clinic in an orderly Swiss city, the stories distill the hard lives of their subjects, whether alcoholic, drug addict, or cancer patient. In "Foie Humaine," set at the Plantation Club, it's always a Tuesday afternoon in...