Praise for The Quantity Theory of Morality : A Literary Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2026 "A cultural polymath with an audacious linguistic flair and a booming laugh, Self produces satirical and complex works--about psychiatry, technology, mortality, addiction, psychogeography, and societal decay--that take unexpected narrative turns . Self's innovative new novel, The Quantity Theory of Morality , out in March from Grove Press, is 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, as Self plays with the idea that life for his characters is a derivative affair, with the same conversations occurring on a loop . There's never a dull moment in a Will Self book."-- Publishers Weekly 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.