by Will Self
—Rocky Mountain News
"Remarkable…among his most ambitious and imaginative… The Book of Dave seems to be about the crippling nihilism of a world without transcendent meaning and the tensions and contradictions of the religious personality."
—Weekly Standard
"Like Martin Amis, with whom he's often compared, Self marries his verbal acrobatics to social critique, gamely taking on corporate culture, family law, London urban sprawl, religion, racial division and the received wisdom of women's magazines and the pub…You're left with the intoxication of Self's wordplay and the clarity of his visions."
—Los Angeles Times
"You will marvel at the ingenuity of this highly literate, superbly written satire of what societies deem sacred. Highly recommended."
—Library Journal (starred review)
"Will Self excels at what might best be described as the what if?' mode of storytelling. Over four story collections, four novellas, and four novels, Will Self has developed his own antic, satiric and often hilarious stable of what-if stories…Self's fifth novel, The Book of Dave, is his most elaborate…what-if yet. Self imagines what would happen if, 500 years from now, English society was shaped not by Judeo-Christian theology but by the scurrilous rantings of a hateful 21st-century London cabbie."
—New York Times
"Self's command of the English language is both unrivalled and astonishing… [He is] perhaps the best writer of his generation (his short stories are peerless)… The Book of Dave…is Self's most assured work…[It] is, in the end, a bittersweet parallel of a father (Dave) searching for his lost son and a son (Carl) seeking out his lost dad."
—Toronto Globe & Mail
"Not content with one language in which to strut his showy stuff, the fiendishly inventive British novelist Will Self creates an imaginary one and proceeds to riff like mad."
—Boston Globe
"This is as rousing an indictment of organized religion—and especially fundamentalism—as readers are likely to encounter in the post-9/11 canon."
—Booklist (starred review)
Copyright © 2006 by Will Self
Map illustrations copyright © 2006 by Martin Rowson
All rights reserved You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers
Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATATLOGED THE HARDCOVER EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Self, Will.
The Book of Dave : a novel / Will Self.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-1-59691-906-8
1. Taxicab drivers—Fiction. 2. London (England)—Fiction. 3. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 4. Sacred books—Fiction. 5. Regression(Civilization)—Fiction. I. Title
PR6069.E3654B66 2006
823'.914—dc22
2006004750
First published by Bloomsbury USA in 2006
This electronic edition published in 2007 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
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