The Butt

Will Self

Summary

Praise for The Butt:
“Holds up to scrutiny the absurdities of invented belief systems, patched together from fragments of earlier cultures and held in place with the glue of consensual submission. But here, Self is also turning his unforgiving gaze on post-colonialism, multiculturalism, intervention, moral relativism and the nature of how intentions form actions . . . Initially, the reader suspects a homage to Kafka’s The Trial . . . But it becomes clear that Self’s precedent here is Conrad’s Heart of Darkness . . . Self excels at the language of disgust and here physical revulsion saturates every page.”—Guardian
“Monstrosities come and go in this strange, misleading and horribly compelling novel . . . An intertextualist’s paradise. Self deploys (having first appropriated, mugged and bashed) every colonialist, post-colonialist, deconstructionist ethnographical narratologist you can think of. All the usual suspects are twisted, blackened and reconditioned under Self’s cracked and maniacal narrative virtuosity: Greene, Burgess, Orwell, Conrad, even Julian Jaynes and Stan Gooch . . . A hideously engaged, overwritten, barking masterpiece.”—Independent
“Self’s world-building is so thoroughly strange that reading The Butt approximates what it must have been like for Conrad’s readers to journey into the Congo . . . Self’s shocking conclusion amounts to a scathing indictment that will leave many readers wondering if they too are guilty of the habit.”—Los Angeles Times
“The writing crackles with stupendous imagery . . . Beneath the comedic chronicle of absurdities that come to pass for normality, and beyond the dazzling display of writerly skill, Self’s novel probes unpalatable truths about the male of the human species . . . Savage and stylish.”—Financial Times
“From Self, the British master of the satirical fantasy, comes a loquacious and inventive farce about the demise of civilization . . . Self successfully presents an ironic and timely metaphor for our post-9/11 Bigger Brother world.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Fans of Self’s previous edgy satires won’t be disappointed . . . Balancing stories of pained intimacies between fathers and sons, it also brilliantly caricatures the fervor of literal-minded religious fundamentalism . . . Blistering astute.”—Rocky Mountain News

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