Why Read

Will Self may not be the last modernist at work but at the moment hes the most fascinating of the traditions torch bearers.New York

From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation by the Guardian, Will Selfs Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.

Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, to the Australian outback and to literary forms past and future. With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf, Kafka, Orwell and Conrad. He writes movingly on W.G. Sebalds childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughss Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask readers how, what and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Whether he is writing on the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the nineteenth century or on the impossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online, Selfs trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humour infuse every piece.