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“Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation.”—Guardian
A blistering, brilliant novel from the Booker-shortlisted author, elegantly reflecting his Geoffrey Faber Memorial award-winning story collection The Quantity Theory of Insanity
In The Quantity Theory of Morality, Will Self’s unconventional new novel, his pen remains dipped in vitriol and elegance as ever. In this dark yet hilariously satirical “state-of-an-era novel,” Self’s target is a collective morality that is nothing more or less than pure sociability. His middle-class, middle-English characters appear trapped in a timeless go-round of polite chitchat in dinner parties that refract like a hall of mirrors as the novel progresses, 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.
With recurring—if defeated—appearances from now-canonical characters like Zack Busner, the repetition of each chapter, or “Proposition” shows Will Self to be both a master of satire and slapstick humor 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 34 years ago: The Quantity Theory of Insanity. That literary psycho-surgery proved there wasn't enough sanity 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.
Praise for The Quantity Theory of Morality:
A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2026
“Brilliant, demanding in the way the best literature is demanding . . . The Quantity Theory of Morality is a clever novel, rewarded by rereading . . . Sparkling and rebarbative, abrasive and relentlessly performative, it is, in other words, classic Will Self.”—Toby Lichtig, Wall Street Journal
“A raucously inventive state-of-the-nation satire . . . More even than Martin Amis, Self reads like early Nabokov: barbed, provocative, virtuosic . . . An excoriating vision of moral decline.”—The Guardian (UK)
“It is deliciously poignant. It is heartbreakingly antic. It is sincere and wry at the same time . . . My copy has so many turned down pages it is practically uncloseable.”—Stuart Kelly, The Scotsman (UK)
“A coruscating satire about a group of metropolitan sophisticates trapped in an endless round of infidelity and self-loathing . . . At the heart of The Quantity Theory of Morality is a lamentation about our collective ethical compass gone askew.”—The Telegraph (UK)
“A dystopian farce featuring rampant English fascists burning piles of e-readers, as well as a 'semi-sentient' organic AI octopus called Margaret ... Told in Self’s customary brand of companionable misanthropy where even the most innocuous sentence has the petulant timbre of a diatribe. His prose, with its languid digressions punctuated by intermittent bursts of wit, achieves the rare feat of being lively and sluggish at the same time.”—The Times (UK)
“Self's wickedly withering voice is never better . . . While dripping with acidic satire, The Quantity Theory of Morality is also full of pathos and penetrating insights into the best and worst in human nature. A consummate performance, it's a book that might finally silence Self's critics.”—The Spectator (UK)
“The latest satirical salvo from writer-provocateur Will Self in which he takes down middle class middle England . . . Satire is the name of his game, and this time in his sights is England's upper middle class. As the opening theme of North London types in an endless round of dinner parties, holidays and affairs becomes twisted into ever more startling variations . . . A deeply unhappy merry-go-round . . . The impoverisation of our senses as a result of digitalism is something that exercises him greatly.”—Front Row, BBC
“Self is a social critic before he is anything, but he is a truly creative and ambitious one. . . Richly entertaining and provocative — a satire on middle-class manners that makes other satires on middle-class manners look hopelessly mannered . . . It is a pleasure, or at least a challenge, to argue with Self — someone who can impress, inform, amuse or surprise the reader whatever their eventual conclusions. In an age of prose that is tedious enough that it is imitable and replaceable by AI, this is something to value."—The Critic Magazine
“An excoriating satire of the English middle class and the Anglo-European liberal elite that’s centered on a group of incestuous middle-aged London friends . . . The idiosyncratic book has an unorthodox structure and hallucinatory feel . . . There’s never a dull moment in a Will Self book.”—Elaine Szewczyk, Publishers Weekly
“Self is a writer’s writer, partly because he’s constantly pushing the limits of fiction. He knows several languages and employs an astonishing word hoard. The novel is packed with references. He knows his Bible. Above all, Self is laugh-out-loud funny, to the point that if someone else is in the room when you are reading this book, you’ll want to read passages aloud . . . This is not a linear yarn for readers hooked on detective novels or page-turning thrillers. But if you love good writing and enjoy raucous invention and scathing lampooning, you will thoroughly enjoy The Quantity Theory of Morality. As is the case with effective satirists, Self is nothing if not provocative.”—The Arts Fuse Magazine
“A black satire of bad behavior . . . 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, particularly with Zack Busner’s entertainingly misanthropic philosophizing.”—Publishers Weekly
Praise for Will Self:
“Will Self may not be the last modernist at work but at the moment he’s the most fascinating of the tradition’s torch bearers.”—New York Magazine
“Self is the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation, a writer whose formidable intellect is mercilessly targeted on the limits of the cerebral as a means of understanding. Yes, he makes you think, but he also insists that you feel.”—Guardian
“Mr. 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 writes in a high-modernist, hallucinatory, stream-of-consciousness style, leaping between sentences, time periods, and perspectives . . . The reward is a strange, vivid book.”—New Yorker
“Self’s prose demands real attention, but is never less than sharp, biting and incisive. Prepare to be eaten whole.”—Independent
“Like the work of the great high modernists from the 1920s, like Joyce, Woolf and Eliot, there is a kind of chaotic beauty in Self’s unrestricted writing . . . You’ll be simultaneously entertained, mesmerized, intellectually stimulated, baffled—and laugh your ass off.”—NPR
“Will Self’s Phone will be one of the most significant literary works of our century . . . Over and above the intellectual sprezzatura of the work, there is, at its heart, an emotional core, a profound sense of grief.”—New Statesman
“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 . . . Writers, too, as Self so wonderfully proves, can awaken the half-dead and reanimate that which has been sunk in oblivion.”—New York Review of Books
Will Self is the author of many novels and books of nonfiction, including most recently Elaine, from Grove Press in 2024; Great Apes; How the Dead Live, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year; The Butt, winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction; Umbrella, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; Shark; Phone; the memoir Will; and the essay collection Why Read. He lives in South London. will-self.com