Praise for Liver : "Smart, beguiling and occasionally stomach-turning . Simultaneously Dickensian and Burroughsian; grotesque comedy narrated in ornate prose." -- New York Times Book Review "Ecstatically evoking miasma, Self's prose is feral in pace, always zeroing in for the kill." -- New Yorker "[ Liver is] almost as charming as it is aggressive . These are for those who like their stories brainy, cunning, hard-edged and diabolical." -- Washington Post "Tremendous fun, and sometimes much more than that. Self has always had a blunt brilliance, but he's most interesting when he pauses to explore fragility, and not only to burst those bubbles. These stories are busy with stylistic experiment, high-concept in-jokes, verbal impasto and flights of fancy .

which test the limits of narrative." -- Guardian "A handsomely presented collection of four interconnected novellas . Pickled, engorged, fatty, tumor-troubled, cirrhotic and variously damaged livers unite a cast of grotesques, saved from caricaturisation by lashings of significant detail . It is cerebral stuff, but its impact is positively visceral. Reading it is enough to make one feel jaundiced, bilious and sore-livered. This, by the way, is meant as a compliment to one of the most manically imaginative writers at work today." -- Financial Times "For all the extravagant, cartoonish hideousness of the worlds many of Self's characters inhabit--from Soho drinking clubs to Kensington crack houses--life remains something precious . Self's London has the qualities of the eponymous vital organ.

" -- Independent "All of Self's hallmarks are in place here: a prose style that scuds from the slangy to the hypertrophic and back; a keen sense of place; a sharp satirist's eye coldly cast on fashionable London; and a fondness for what might be called the High Concept" -- Times Literary Supplement "The reliably diabolical Self delivers four longish stories about decay, debauchery and deliverance . Self's parts function quite well together to produce a picture of putrid beauty." -- Publishers Weekly "Wit, furious energy, an idiosyncratic intellect and ornate, often strong language mark this British writer's darkly offbeat fiction . Brilliant and blistering." -- Kirkus Reviews "In his latest collection, Self again writes of drug addiction and egos and the destruction of the titular organ . Each story has a distinctive voice--Self employs linguistic bravado in all." -- Library Journal.