Overview

In The Quantity Theory of Morality, Will Self's pen remains dipped in vitriol and elegance as ever. The disaffected, middle-class, middle-aged urbanites that populate the novel seem helpless to stop the decay of their intimate, self-conscious social circle. And yet, as Self's skewering (and self-skewering) grows ever more wildly imaginative, targeting faith, death, money, queerness, Jewishness and nearly every piece of our social fabric's connective tissue, it becomes all too clear that the decay cannot simply be cut out - their lives are rotten to their core. With recurring - if defeated - appearances from now-canonical characters like Zack Busner, this new work shows Self to be both a master of satire and slapstick humour and a sublime and thoughtful critic of the alienation of modern life. The Quantity Theory of Morality delicately bookends his award-winning story collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity, which Martin Amis likened to a cross between 'a manic J. G. Ballard and a depressed David Lodge.' Although, as ever, 'Will Self's world is all his own.'

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9781804711224

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Reviews

A black satire of bad behaviour . . . his eye for human foibles and their consequences are sharp . . . A potent feat of provocation * Kirkus Reviews * The vitriol is strong in Self's devilish latest . . . Self's caustic style is on full display * Publishers Weekly * Self often enough writes with such vividness it's as if he is the first person to see anything at all * New York Times * Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation * Guardian * Self has indeed been a goat among the sheep of contemporary English fiction, a puckish trickster self-consciously at odds with its middle-class politeness * New York Review of Books *

Self often enough writes with such vividness it's as if he is the first person to see anything at all * New York Times * Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation * Guardian * Self has indeed been a goat among the sheep of contemporary English fiction, a puckish trickster self-consciously at odds with its middle-class politeness * New York Review of Books *

Author Information

Will Self is the author of many novels and books of non-fiction, including Great Apes, The Book of Dave, How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year 2002, The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2008, Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2012, and Elaine. He lives in south London.

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