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“Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation.”—Guardian
A blistering, refracted novel from the Booker-shortlisted author, elegantly bookending his Geoffrey Faber Memorial award-winning story collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity
In The Quantity Theory of Morality, Will Self’s unconventional new novel, his pen remains dipped in vitriol and elegance as ever. The disaffected, middle-class, middle-aged urbanites that populate the refracted parallel chapters 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, the repetition of each chapter, or “Proposition” shows Will Self to be a master of satire and even slapstick humor as well as a sublime, thoughtful critic of the alienation of modern life. The Quantity Theory of Morality elegantly bookends Self ’s Geoffrey Faber Memorial 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.”