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  • Published: 1 March 2018
  • ISBN: 9780141046396
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $22.99

Phone




A wildly entertaining new novel brilliantly skewering our contemporary world, from our fiercest writer

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.

  • Published: 1 March 2018
  • ISBN: 9780141046396
  • Imprint: Penguin General UK
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 624
  • RRP: $22.99

About the author

Will Self

Will Self is the author of three short-story collections, The Quantity Theory of Insanity (winner of the 1992 Geoffrey Faber award), Grey Area and Tough Tough Toys for Touch Tough Boys; a dyad of novellas, Cock and Bull, and a third novella, The Sweet Smell of Psychosis; and four novels, My Idea of Fun, Great Apes, How the Dead Live (shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year 2000) and The Book of Dave.

Together with the photographer David Gamble, he produced Perfidious Man, a sideways look at contemporary masculinity. There have been three collections of journalism, Junk Mail, Sore Sites and Feeding Frenzy. Will Self has written for a plethora of publications over the years and is a regular broadcaster on television and radio. His latest work is a collection of pieces entitled Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes.

Also by Will Self

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Praise for Phone

[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

Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times

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

Metro

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

A.N. Wilson, Evening Standard

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

Observer

Addictive and compelling. Not to be missed

Daily Mail

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

Daily Telegraph

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

Prospect

Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation

Guardian

Teems with brilliance and originality

Attitude

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

Times Literary Supplement

A stunner

Mail on Sunday

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

The Scotsman

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

New Statesman