Phone

'WHATEVER YOU DO hang on to the phone. . . . . . . . ! . . . . . . . . ! Feel the smoothness of its bevelled screen . . . . . . . . ! . . . . . . . . ! Place your thumb in the soft depression of its belly-button - turn it over and over. . . . . . . . ! . . . . . . . . ! A five hundred-quid worry bead - and all I worry about is losing the bloody thing. . . . . . . . ! . . . . . . . . !' 
 
For the four characters at the heart of Will Self's brilliantly acute novel of our times the five hundred-quid worry bead in their pocket may be both a blessing and a curse. For elderly Dr Zachary Busner it is a mysterious object - 'NO CALLER ID - How should this be interpreted? Is it that the caller is devoid of an identity due to some psychological or physical trauma?' - but also it's his life line to his autistic grandson Ben, whose own connection with technology is, in turn, a vital one. 
 
For Jonathan De'Ath , aka 'the Butcher', MI6 agent, the phone may reveal his best kept secret of all: that Colonel Gawain Thomas, husband, father, and highly-trained tank commander - is Jonathan 's long time lover. 
 
And when technology, love and violence finally converge in the wreckage of postwar Iraq, the Colonel and the Spy's dalliance will determine the destiny of nations. 
 
Uniting our most urgent contemporary concerns: from the ubiquitous mobile phone to a family in chaos; from the horror of modern war, to the end of privacy, Phone is Will Self's most important and compelling novel to date.

A triumph ... Phone is the final instalment in one of the most ambitious and important literary projects of the 21st century ... It'll take you a couple of weeks to read all three novels properly. But I can't think of a better way to spend your time. Self's message is a perennially important one, brilliantly expressed: only connect

Brilliant ... a kind of epic anti-tweet ... what better riposte to a culture that thinks in fewer than 140 characters?

This trilogy will be seen in years to come as one of the most significant literary works of our century, books that reflect and refract the hideousness of our times ... over and above the intellectual sprezzatura of the work, there is, at its heart, an emotional core, a profound sense of grief

A series of fast-paced, laugh-out-loud witty, disgusting and frequently well-observed scenes. He has a sharp ear for dialogue, and woven in and out of the surreal narrative are some of the wisest reflections on the folly of war (in this case the Gulf War) that you are likely to read outside the pages of Tolstoy

Addictive and compelling. Not to be missed

There are marvels in store ... Self is profoundly interested in psychosis, paranoia, altered mental states, drug dependency , repetition compulsion and how our minds process time and memory

Teems with brilliance and originality

Self has achieved the status of a true classic. He writes books that no one else could possibly write and which everyone admires ... he is in danger of becoming a national treasure... Self's books are radically funny raucous romps, understandable and enjoyable by just about anyone and everyone

Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation

[A] hurricane of eloquence blows in terrific passages of satire, comedy, even suspense - not to mention Self's pitch-perfect ear for the jargons and lingoes of modernity

A brain-blitzing riff on war, technology and consciousness ... thrilling - who else is writing with this much freedom and verve right now?

A tale of the insights of the limitations of technology, the insights of schizophrenia, the abuses of modern warfare, and of a clandestine love affair

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 Shark. His most recent novel, Phone, was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize. He lives in south London.

For the four characters at the heart of Will Self's brilliantly acute novel of our times the phone is both a blessing and a curse. For elderly Dr Zachary Busner it is a mysterious object, but also his life line to his autistic grandson Ben, whose own connection with technology is, in turn, a vital one. 
 
For Jonathan De'Ath, aka 'the Butcher', MI6 agent, the phone may reveal his best kept secret of all: that Colonel Gawain Thomas, husband, father, and highly-trained tank commander - is Jonathan's long time lover. 
 
And when technology, love and violence finally converge in the wreckage of postwar Iraq, the Colonel and the Spy's dalliance will determine the destiny of nations. Uniting our most urgent contemporary concerns: from the ubiquitous mobile phone to a family in chaos; from the horror of modern war, to the end of privacy, Phone is Will Self's most important and compelling novel to date.

Shark

An exciting, mesmerizing, wonderfully disturbing book. Go with it and it will suck you under

Breathtaking and dazzling. An exhilarating tour-de-force ... immersing the reader in a trippy Odyssey

Intellectually dazzling and emotionally frazzling. Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation

Will challenge and disturb, exasperate and entertain

Highly enjoyable, vividly, even profoundly imagined. Self is creating something rather grand

Shark turns upon an actual incident in WWII - mentioned in the film Jaws - when the ship which had delivered the fissile material to the south Pacific to be dropped on Hiroshima was subsequently sunk by a Japanese submarine with the loss of 900 men, including 200 killed in the largest shark attack ever recorded. 
 
When the Creep, an American resident in the 1970s at the therapeutic community in north London supervised by maverick psychiatrist Zack Busner, starts to tell rambling stories of thrashing about in the water while under attack from sharks, Busner has to decide whether they are schizoid delusions or some sort of reality.

A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes

Liver

A breathtaking and unsettling collection of shorter fiction from the 'English prose laureate of dispute and disorientation' London Review of Books

Liver - Booker prize nominee Will Self's extraordinary examination of lives out of control 
 
'Magnificent, horribly funny' The Times 
 
'Brilliant. One of the most manically imaginative writers at work today' Financial Times 
 
'This is what Self does best: snap-shots of decline and high-concept satires of the "slapstick of addiction" ' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'The best work of Self's I've read' Literary Review 
 
From Will Self, the Booker shortlisted author of Umbrella and the pre-eminent chronicler of our neuroses and our times, Liver is a moving, hilarious and scabrous collection of stories about egos, appetites and addictions. It will be adored by readers of Martin Amis, Irvine Welsh and David Mitchell. 
 
'Peculiar, subtle, affecting, humane . . . busy with stylistic experiment, high-concept in-jokes, verbal impasto and flights of fancy. Tremendous fun' Guardian 
 
'No one can revel in the disease and decay of humanity like Self' Metro 
 
'Self is a superb stylist and the laureate of substance abuse, and these hepatic rhapsodies contain some of his most inventive writing' The Times 
 
Will Self is the author of nine novels including Cock and Bull; My Idea of Fun; Great Apes; How the Dead Live; Dorian, an Imitation; The Book of Dave; The Butt; Walking to Hollywood and Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has written five collections of shorter fiction and three novellas: The Quantity Theory of Insanity; Grey Area; License to Hug; The Sweet Smell of Psychosis; Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo; Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys; Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe and Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes. Self has also compiled a number of nonfiction works, including The Undivided Self: Selected Stories; Junk Mail; Perfidious Man; Sore Sites; Feeding Frenzy; Psychogeography; Psycho Too and The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker.

These remarkable new pieces from Will Self each feature the largest of our internal organs: the liver, in varying states of disease and decay. In 'Foie Humane' we go inside a Soho drinking club, the denizens of which live in a highly stylised yet emotionally dead state of excess. 'Prometheus' tells the story of a dazzlingly successful advertising copywriter who can sell anything to anyone at any time. But things go wrong when he meets Zeus, a bigshot entrepreneur with a beautiful and manipulative wife. Tony Phillips's subterranean Kensington flat is the setting for 'Birdy Num Num,' where obsessives spend their days in a crepuscular realm of cocaine and heroin. Finally, in 'Leberknodel', a terminal liver cancer patient travels to Zurich to commit assisted suicide. When she arrives, however, the cancer mysteriously goes into remission.

A Selection of Real Meals

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker

The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker - hilarious restaurant reviews by Booker nominee Will Self 
 
'Most food writing and restaurant criticism is concerned with the ideal, with how by cooking this, or dining there, you can somehow ingurgitate a new - or at any rate improved - social, aesthetic and even spiritual persona. I aimed to turn this proposition on its head, and instead of commenting on where and what people would ideally like to eat I would consider where and what they actually did: the ready meals, buffet snacks and - most importantly - fast food that millions of Britons chomp upon in the go-round of their often hurried and dyspeptic lives.' 
 
In this selection from his wickedly funny New Statesman Real Meals column, Will Self reviews the chains where most of us go to eat (KFC, Greggs, Yo! Sushi, Pizza Express and their like), delves into the ubiquitous Thai meal and Chicken Tikka Masala, and experiences hotel breakfasts, frozen TV dinners and airline food on our behalf. These are restaurant reviews of the kind you've never read before. 
 
Will Self is the author of nine novels including Cock and Bull; My Idea of Fun; Great Apes; How the Dead Live; Dorian, an Imitation; The Book of Dave; The Butt; Walking to Hollywood and Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has written five collections of shorter fiction and three novellas: The Quantity Theory of Insanity; Grey Area; License to Hug; The Sweet Smell of Psychosis; Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo; Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys; Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe and Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes. Self has also compiled a number of nonfiction works, including The Undivided Self: Selected Stories; Junk Mail; Perfidious Man; Sore Sites; Feeding Frenzy; Psychogeography; Psycho Too and The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker.

'Most food writing and restaurant criticism is concerned with the ideal, with how by cooking this, or dining there, you can somehow ingurgitate a new - or at any rate improved - social, aesthetic and even spiritual persona. I aimed to turn this proposition on its head, and instead of commenting on where and what people would ideally like to eat I would consider where and what they actually did: the ready meals, buffet snacks and - most importantly - fast food that millions of Britons chomp upon in the go-round of their often hurried and dyspeptic lives.' 
 
In this selection from his hilarious New Statesman Real Meals column, Will Self reviews the chains where most of us go to eat (KFC, Greggs, Yo! Sushi, Pizza Express and their like), delves into the ubiquitous Thai meal and chicken tikka masala, and experiences hotel breakfasts, frozen tv dinners and airline food on our behalf. These are restaurant reviews of the kind you've never read before.

And Other Stories

A moving, hilarious and scabrous portrayal of egos, appetites and addictions, Liver is an extraordinary examination of lives out of control and beyond saving by the pre-eminent chronicler of our neuroses and our times.

How the Dead Live

How the Dead Live - Booker nominee Will Self's hilarious novel about the afterlife 
 
'Scathingly entertaining' The Times 
 
'Lily is a colossal heroine, a nighttown Molly Bloom ... What begins as a satiric novel of ideas ends as a surprisingly moving elegy' Guardian 
 
Scabrous, vicious and unpleasant in life, Lily Bloom has not been improved by death. She has changed addresses, of course, and now inhabits a basement flat in Dulston - London's borough for those no longer troubled by breathing - but if anything her temperament has worsened. Finding it hard to deal with the (enforced) company of a calcified, pop-obsessed foetus, her dead, foul-mouthed son and three gruesome creatures made of her own unwanted fat, she must find something to do with her time. So how do the dead live? And what happens when they stop being dead? 
 
'The work of a novelist writing at the height of his powers. It is a horror story, a love-me-do story, a full-frontal assault on the seven deadly sins - and a celebration of them. Lily may be an old cow but she's good company' Evening Standard 
 
Will Self is the author of nine novels including Cock and Bull; My Idea of Fun; Great Apes; How the Dead Live; Dorian, an Imitation; The Book of Dave; The Butt; Walking to Hollywood and Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has written five collections of shorter fiction and three novellas: The Quantity Theory of Insanity; Grey Area; License to Hug; The Sweet Smell of Psychosis; Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo; Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys; Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe and Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes. Self has also compiled a number of nonfiction works, including The Undivided Self: Selected Stories; Junk Mail; Perfidious Man; Sore Sites; Feeding Frenzy; Psychogeography; Psycho Too and The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker.

Scabrous, vicious and unpleasant in life, Lily Bloom has not been noticeably mellowed by death. She has changed addresses, of course, and now inhabits a basement flat in Dulston- London's borough for those no longer troubled by breathing- but if anything her temperament has worsened. Finding it hard to deal with the (enforced) company of a calcified, pop-obsessed foetus, her dead, foul mouthed son and three gruesome creatures made of her own unwanted fat, she must find something to do with her time. So how do the dead live? And what happens when they stop being dead?

Will Self

Darkly angelic prose... a joy to read, with the final part in particular recalling David Foster Wallace at his best

Refreshing . . . Self is never happier than when frolicking in the hinterland between sincerity and performative, winking hyperbole

One of Britain's most inspired writers offers a no-holds-barred tale of his fascinating life. Spectacular . . . Self delivers a hallucinatory, confessional version of his life

Self's writing has the same technicolour velocity, malign comedy as his best novels

Who else is writing with this much freedom and verve right now?

One of the most significant literary works of our century

Intellectually dazzling and emotionally frazzling

Will's mother's hokey homily, Waste not, want not... hisses in his ears as he oscillates furiously on the spot, havering on the threshold between the bedroom and the dying one... all the while cradling the plastic leech of the syringe in the crook of his arm. Oscillating furiously, and, as he presses the plunger home a touch more... and more, he hears it again and again: Waaaste nooot, waaant nooot..! whooshing into and out of him, while the blackness wells up at the periphery of his vision, and his hackneyed heart begins to beat out weirdly arrhythmic drum fills - even hitting the occasional rim-shot on his resonating rib cage. He waits, paralysed, acutely conscious, that were he simply to press his thumb right home, it'll be a cartoonish death: That's all folks! as the aperture screws shut forever.

Will Self

Praise for Will

Darkly angelic prose... a joy to read, with the final part in particular recalling David Foster Wallace at his best

Refreshing . . . Self is never happier than when frolicking in the hinterland between sincerity and performative, winking hyperbole

One of Britain's most inspired writers offers a no-holds-barred tale of his fascinating life. Spectacular . . . Self delivers a hallucinatory, confessional version of his life

Darkly angelic prose... a joy to read, with the final part in particular recalling David Foster Wallace at his best

Refreshing . . . Self is never happier than when frolicking in the hinterland between sincerity and performative, winking hyperbole

One of Britain's most inspired writers offers a no-holds-barred tale of his fascinating life. Spectacular . . . Self delivers a hallucinatory, confessional version of his life

Darkly angelic prose... a joy to read, with the final part in particular recalling David Foster Wallace at his best

Refreshing . . . Self is never happier than when frolicking in the hinterland between sincerity and performative, winking hyperbole

One of Britain's most inspired writers offers a no-holds-barred tale of his fascinating life. Spectacular . . . Self delivers a hallucinatory, confessional version of his life

Books by Will Self

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter