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Dorian
Dorian
Jul 18, 2025 7:48 PM

Author:Will Self

Dorian

Dorian - Will Self's brilliant 'imitation' of Oscar Wilde's original tainted love story

'Brutal, savage, infinitely readable' Observer

'Chilling, hysterical, tasteless and haunting. A Gothic thriller complementing and enriching its original' Independent on Sunday

In the summer of 1981, aristocratic, drug-addicted Henry Wooten and Warhol-acolyte Baz Hallward meet Dorian Gray. Dorian is a golden adonis - perfect, pure and (so far) deliciously uncorrupted. The subject of Baz's video installation, Cathode Narcissus, and the object of Henry's attentions, Dorian is launched on a hedonistic binge that spans the '80s and '90s. But as Baz and Henry succumb to the disease du jour, how is it that Dorian, despite all his sexual and narcotic debauchery, remains so unsullied - so vibrantly alive?

'A book that filled its first reviewers with "the odour of moral and spiritual putrefaction" just got smellier, darker and funnier' Observer

Dorian will be adored by fans of Will Self and Martin Amis and is an essential read for those who enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Will Self is the author of nine novels including Cock and Bull; My Idea of Fun; Great Apes; How the Dead Live; Dorian, an Imitation; The Book of Dave; The Butt; Walking to Hollywood and Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. He has written five collections of shorter fiction and three novellas: The Quantity Theory of Insanity; Grey Area; License to Hug; The Sweet Smell of Psychosis; Design Faults in the Volvo 760 Turbo; Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys; Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe and Liver: A Fictional Organ with a Surface Anatomy of Four Lobes. Self has also compiled a number of nonfiction works, including The Undivided Self: Selected Stories; Junk Mail; Perfidious Man; Sore Sites; Feeding Frenzy; Psychogeography; Psycho Too and The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Prawn Cracker.

Reviews

One of the greats of late 20th- and early 21st-century fiction

—— Guardian

The Chilean is being canonised by critics as the first great writer of this century

—— Financial Times

One of the most respected and influential writers of [his] generation... At once funny and vaguely, pervasively, frightening

—— John Banville , The Nation

The most important writer to emerge from Latin America since Garcia Marquez

—— San Francisco Chronicle

Bolaño is the brightest literary star in the current Latin American panorama

—— El Pais

Immensely readable-Miss Murdoch is blessedly clever without any of the aridity which, for some reason, that word is supposed to imply

—— Philip Toynbee

Under the Net is a winner, a thoroughly accomplished first novel...Miss Murdoch's control of her material is completely assured. She is a distinguished novelist of a rare kind

—— Kingsley Amis , Spectator

P.G. Wodehouse is the gold standard of English wit

—— Christopher Hitchens

To dive into a Wodehouse novel is to swim in some of the most elegantly turned phrases in the English language

—— Ben Schott

Wodehouse is so utterly, properly, simply funny

—— Adele Parks

I've recorded all the Jeeves books, and I can tell you this: it's like singing Mozart. The perfection of the phrasing is a physical pleasure. I doubt if any writer in the English language has more perfect music

—— Simon Callow

Wodehouse was quite simply the Bee's Knees. And then some

—— Joseph Connolly

I constantly find myself drooling with admiration at the sublime way Wodehouse plays with the English language

—— Simon Brett

Quite simply, the master of comic writing at work

—— Jane Moore

To pick up a Wodehouse novel is to find oneself in the presence of genius - no writer has ever given me so much pure enjoyment

—— John Julius Norwich

Compulsory reading for anyone who has a pig, an aunt - or a sense of humour!

—— Lindsey Davis

The Wodehouse wit should be registered at Police HQ as a chemical weapon

—— Kathy Lette

Witty and effortlessly fluid. His books are laugh-out-loud funny

—— Arabella Weir

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

—— Hugh Laurie

The greatest comic writer ever

—— Douglas Adams

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

—— Sebastian Faulks

Sublime comic genius

—— Ben Elton
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