Description

‘Reads like early Nabokov: barbed, provocative, virtuosic in his performance of linguistic jokes…rollicking, unsettling and furiously intelligent’ Guardian

This dark yet hilariously satirical state-of-an-era novel sees Will Self’s middle-class, middle-English characters apparently trapped in a timeless go-round of polite chitchat in dinner parties that refract like a hall of mirrors, until one day someone says something to the effect of, ‘This way to the gas chamber, please, ladies and gentlemen.’

The Quantity Theory of Morality finally solves the equation of time and money that dominates our lives, in a way that is simultaneously deranging, destabilizing and hilarious, showing Self to be both a master of satire and slapstick humour and a sublime and thoughtful critic of the alienation of modern life.

With The Quantity Theory of Morality, Self provides the sequel to his award-winning debut of 35 years ago, The Quantity Theory of Insanity. That literary psycho-surgery proved there wasn’t enough sanity to go around – now he’s established what many of us fear to be the absolute truth: there isn’t enough good to go around, either.

Publisher Review

A black satire of bad behaviour . . . his eye for human foibles and their consequences are sharp . . . A potent feat of provocation * Kirkus Reviews * The vitriol is strong in Self’s devilish latest . . . Self’s caustic style is on full display * Publishers Weekly * Self often enough writes with such vividness it’s as if he is the first person to see anything at all * New York Times * Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation * Guardian * Self has indeed been a goat among the sheep of contemporary English fiction, a puckish trickster self-consciously at odds with its middle-class politeness * New York Review of Books *