The Book of Dave (67 page)

By the Same Author

FICTION

The Quantity Theory of Insanity

Cock & Bull

My Idea of Fun

Grey Area

Great Apes

NON-FICTION

Junk Mail

Sore Sites

Perfidious Man

Feeding Frenzy

"Self is endlessly talented."

"Will Self's satire is thorough and multi-layered, reaching far beyond a simple skewering of the arbitrary nature of the sacred.
Alternating between the future Ham and Dave's London provides plenty of deferred comedy… while simultaneously drawing solemn
attention to the weight of our own historical footprint."

"Fans of Self's previous edgy satires won't be disappointed with
The Book of
Dave,
his latest riff on the strange complexities of the modern world. Balancing stories of pained intimacies between fathers and
sons, it also brilliantly caricatures the fervor of literal-minded religious fundamentalizm…Blisteringly astute."

"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."

"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."

"You will marvel at the ingenuity of this highly literate, superbly written satire of what societies deem sacred. Highly recommended."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"This is as rousing an indictment of organized religion—and especially fundamentalism—as readers are likely to encounter in
the post-9/11 canon."

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