Will Self Libros

He's like Banksy -- but not as big...They're Not Pets, Susan,' says a stern father who has just shot a bumblebee, its wings sparkling in the evening sunlight; a lone office worker, less than an inch high, looks out over the river in his lunch break, 'Dreaming of Packing it all In'; and a tiny couple share a 'Last Kiss' against the soft neon lights of the city at midnight. Mixing sharp humour with a delicious edge of melancholy, Little People in the City brings together the collected photographs of Slinkachu, a street-artist who for several years has been leaving little hand-painted people in the bustling city to fend for themselves, waiting to be discovered. . . 'Oddly enough, even when you know they are just hand-painted figurines, you can't help but feel that their plights convey something of our own fears about being lost and vulnerable in a big, bad city.' The Times

Poetry. O, Tempora! O, Mores! -- To Margaret -- "To Octavia" -- Tamerlane -- Song -- Dreams -- Spirits of the Dead -- Evening Star -- Imitation -- Stanzas -- A Dream -- "The Happiest Day, the Happiest Hour" -- The Lake: To__ -- Sonnet: To Science -- Al Aaraaf -- "Mysterious Star!" -- Romance -- To __ ("The bowers whereat") -- To the River __ -- To __ ("I heed not") -- Fairy Land -- Fairy-Land -- Alone -- "To Isaac Lea" -- Elizabeth -- From an Album -- "Lines on Joe Locke" -- To Helen -- Israfel -- The Sleeper -- The Valley of Unrest -- The City in the Sea -- Lenore -- To One in Paradise -- Hymn -- Enigma -- Serenade -- The Coliseum -- To F__s S. O__d -- To F__ -- Bridal Ballad -- Sonnet: To Zante -- The Haunted Palace -- Sonnet: Silence -- The Conqueror Worm -- Dream-land -- Eulalie: A Song -- The Raven -- A Valentine -- "Deep in Earth" -- To Miss Louise Olivia Hunter -- To M.L. S__ -- To __ __ __ -- Ulalume: A Ballad -- An Enigma -- The Bells -- To Helen -- A Dream within a Dream -- For Annie -- Eldorado -- Sonnet: To My Mother -- Annabel Lee -- Scenes from "Politian."\Fiction. Metzengerstein -- The Duc De L'Omelette -- A Tale of Jerusalem -- Loss of Breath -- Bon-Bon -- Four Beasts in One: the Homo-Cameleopard -- MS. Found in a Bottle -- The Assignation -- The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaal -- Lionizing -- Shadow: A Parable -- Silence: A Fable -- Berenice -- Morella -- King Pest -- Mystification -- Ligeia -- How to Write a Blackwood Article -- The Devil in the Belfry -- The Man That Was Used Up -- The Fall of the House of Usher -- William Wilson -- The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion -- Some Account of Stonehenge, the Giant's Dance -- Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling -- Instinct vs. Reason: A Black Cat -- The Business Man -- The Philosophy of Furniture -- The Man of the Crowd -- The Island of the Fay -- The Murders in the Rue Morgue -- A Descent into the Maelstrom -- The Colloquy of Monos and Una -- Never Bet the Devil Your Head -- Eleonora -- Three Sundays in a Week -- The Oval Portrait -- The Maque of the Red Death -- The Pit and the Pendulum -- The Mystery of Marie Roget -- Morning on the Wissahiccon -- The Tell-Tale Heart -- The Gold Bug -- The Black Cat -- Diddling Considered as One of the Exact Sciences -- Byron and Miss Chaworth -- The Spectacles -- The Oblong Box -- A Tale of the Ragged Mountains -- The Premature Burial -- The Purloined Letter -- The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether -- Mesmeric Revelation -- "Thou Art the Man" -- The Balloon-Hoax -- The Angel of the Odd -- The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq. -- The Thousand-and-Second Tale of Scheherazade -- Some Words with a Mummy -- The Power of Words -- The Imp of the Perverse -- The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar -- The Sphinx -- The Cask of Amontillado -- The Domain of Arnheim -- Mellonta Tauta -- Landor's Cottage -- Hop-Frog -- Von Kempelen and His Discovery -- "X-ing a Paragrab" -- Eureka: A Prose Poem -- The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

From the Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella, a world-girdling collection of writings inspired by a life lived in and for literature.

How far would you go to escape the real world? The underground man had always felt like an outsider. He doesn't want to be like other people, working in the 'ant-hill' of society. So he decides to withdraw from the world, scrawling a series of darkly sarcastic notes about the torment he is suffering. Angry and alienated, his only comfort is the humiliation of others. Is he going mad? Or is it the world around him that's insane?

Exploring the intricacies of writing and literature, this collection of essays showcases Will Self's unique voice and sharp wit. Celebrated as a bold and engaging novelist, he offers insightful reflections that challenge conventional perspectives on reading. Each piece invites readers to reconsider their relationship with literature, making it a compelling read for anyone interested in the art of storytelling and the written word.

Shark turns upon an actual incident in WWII - mentioned in the film Jaws - when the ship which had delivered the fissile material to the south Pacific to be dropped on Hiroshima was subsequently sunk by a Japanese submarine with the loss of 900 men, including 200 killed in the largest shark attack ever recorded.

Opening with a dazzling new essay on walking to New York from Heathrow, this stunningly produced book brings together for the first time, fifty of Will Self's unforgettable Independent Columns

A five-hundred-quid worry bead - and all I worry about is losing the bloody thing . . . ' Dementia-addled, 78-year-old antipsychiatrist Dr Zack Busner, turfed out of his home by his ungrateful progeny, is no longer certain of anything - except the persistent ringing of the phone in his pocket. Meanwhile, his autistic grandson Ben, drowning in conspiracy theories as he investigates the ruse known as the Iraq war, is urgently calling. Elsewhere, MI6 agent Jonathan De'Ath (aka the Butcher) is trying to conceal the one secret he knows will ruin him - his affair with tank commander Colonel Gawain Thomas, whose unit is busy shooting up Iraq. And somewhere a phone is ringing . . .

Some people lose their sense of proportion, others their sense of scale, but Simon Dykes, a middle-aged, successful London painter, has lost his sense of perspective in a most disturbing fashion. After a night of routine, pedestrian dabauchery, traipsing from toilet to toilet, and imbibing a host of narcotics on the way, Simon wakes up cuddled in his girlfriend's loving arms. Much to his dismay, however, his girlfriend has turned into a chimpanzee. To add insult to injury, the psychiatric crash team sent to deal with him as he flips his lid is also comprised of chimps. Indeed, the entire city is overrun by clever primates, who, when they are not jostling for position, grooming themselves, or mating some of the females, can be found driving Volvos, hanging out on street corners, and running the world. Nonetheless convinced that he is still a human, Simon is confined to the emergency psychiatric ward of Charing Cross Hospital, where he becomes the patient of Dr. Zack Busner, clinical psychologist, medical doctor, anti-psychiatrist, and former television personality -- an expert at the height of his reign as alpha male. As Busner attempts to convince him that 'everyone who is fully sentient in this world are chimpanzees, ' Simon struggles with the horrifying delusion that he is really a human trapped in a chimp's body.

Dorian, an Imitation is a British novel by Will Self. The book is a modern take on Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. The novel was originally published by Viking Press in 2002 and subsequently by Penguin in 2003. Self was originally asked to adapt the Wilde novel into a film screenplay, but this project did not come to fruition. Instead, Self took this uncompleted screenplay and re-worked it into a novel, which he described as "an imitation - and a homage" to the Wilde original.