As relevant today as when it was first published, We is the first modern dystopian novel which inspired both Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World.The citizens of the One State live in a condition of 'mathematically infallible happiness'. D-503 decides to keep a diary of his days working for the collective good in this clean, blue city state where nature, privacy and individual liberty have been eradicated. But over the course of his journal D-...

Grotesque, deconstructive, and absolutely genius, Vladimir Sorokin’s short story collection Dispatches from the District Committee is a revelatory, offbeat portrait of Soviet life beyond the propaganda and state-sponsored realism.Celebrated—and censored—for its political satire, literary irreverence, and provocative themes, Sorokin's work has been recognized across the world for its scathing, darkly humorous commentary on political and cultural oppression ...

' Elaine is not just a serious work of art, but an unexpected act of filial generosity' GuardianStanding by the mailbox in Ithaca, New York, Elaine thinks of her child and husband, an Ivy League academic, inside her house and wonders... is this it? As she begins to push back against the strictures of her life in 1950s America, she undertakes a disastrous affair that ends her marriage and upends her life.Based on the intimate diari...

In this brilliant work of literary investigation, Matthew Beaumont shines a light on the shadowy perambulations of poets, novelists and thinkers: the fetid, treacherous streets known to Chaucer and Shakespeare; William Blake and his ecstatic peregrinations; the feverish ramblings of opium addict Thomas De Quincey; and, among the lamp-lit literary throng, the supreme nightwalker Charles Dickens. We discover how the nocturnal city has inspired some and served as a balm or narcotic to others....

A postmodern novel of melancholy memory and erotic fantasy—"a filthy tour de force"—by the acclaimed Scottish author of Poor Things ( The Washington Post).1982, Janine is a searing portrait of male need and inadequacy, as explored via the lonely sexual fantasies of Jock McLeish, failed husband, lover, and businessman. Alone in a hotel room, Jock attempts again and again to escape the realities of his life through an elaborate sadomasochis...

A fascinating and unsettling anthology of 32 science fiction short stories in tribute to the prophetic dystopias of New Wave sci-fi pioneer, and literary titan of the twentieth century, J. G. Ballard—featuring Will Self, Iain Sinclair, Christopher Fowler, Chris Beckett, and a new Jerry Cornelius story from Michael Moorcock.Few authors are so iconic that their name is an adjective – Ballard is one of them.Master of both literary and science fiction, his nove...

The Book of Dave is Booker-shortlisted author Will Self's dazzling sixth novelWhat if a demented London cabbie called Dave Rudman wrote a book to his estranged son to give him some fatherly advice? What if that book was buried in Hampstead and hundreds of years later, when rising sea levels have put London underwater, spawned a religion? What if one man decided to question life according to Dave? And what if Dave had indeed made a mistake?Shuttling between the rece...

Shark by Will Self - the eagerly anticipated new novel from the Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella4 May 1970. A week earlier President Nixon has ordered American ground forces into Cambodia to pursue the Vietcong. By the end of the day four students will be lying in the grounds of Kent State University, shot dead by the National Guard. On the other side of the Atlantic, it's a brilliant sunny morning after an April of heavy rain, and at the Concept House therap...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2012For half a century Audrey Death has been in a state of semi-consciousness. Severed from the world of the living after falling victim to Encephalitis lethargica, she has languished in Friern Barnet Mental Hospital. Then, in 1971, maverick psychiatrist Dr Zack Busner arrives.Audrey's experiences of a bygone Edwardian London: her socialist lover, her involvement with the Suffragists, and her work in a munitions factory ...

'Reads like early Nabokov: barbed, provocative, virtuosic in his performance of linguistic jokes...rollicking, unsettling and furiously intelligent' Guardian'Full of pathos and penetrating insights into the best and worst in human nature. A consummate performance, it's a book that might finally silence Self's critics' SpectatorThis dark yet hilariously satirical state-of-an-era novel sees Will Self's middl...

For many years, photographer Michael Collins had wondered what exactly it was that he found so mysterious and compelling about photography. In this series of linked pieces, Collins offers a reappraisal of photographic genres – including the humble and ubiquitous – that he believes are worthy of greater understanding. From restoring abandoned photos, whose subjects are lost to time, to a quotidian history of the studio portrait; from tracing the origins of the photographic survey within the...

'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 ou...