Dr Mukti and Other Tales of Woe - an astonishing collection by Booker nominee Will Self
'Strange, disquieting, very funny and, frankly, rather frightening' GQ
As good as anything he has written ... one of Self's grisliest creations. There is no contemporary writer of fiction more perceptive about psychosis' Financial Times
'Self's enjoyable, intelligent collection of savage stories is splendidly satiric. The title story is a brilliant novella that tells of duelling psychiatrists who use mental patients as weapons. You laugh, but you also flinch' Scotsman
'The conceit of 'Dr Mukti' is as prescient as it is hilarious' Observer
'A destabilizing, funny, abundantly Gothic tour de force' Guardian
'Self is a preternaturally gifted writer. On almost every page of his fiction, one finds stupefyingly arresting images, viciously cutting remarks and hypodermic-sharp social observation' GQ
'Very funny. The flips and folds of Self's writing are as muscular and alarming as ever; there is simply no one else using language in such a manner in Britain today' Independent on Sunday
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.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
It's a tale that depicts a battle between two rival psychiatrists: Dr Shiva Mukti of St Mungo's in Fitzrovia, an Indian "of modest achievement but vaulting ambitions" (ambitions he is convinced are being thwarted by a "crypto-psycho-Semitic" cabal) and the Jewish Dr Zack Busner, father of the Quantity Theory of Insanity and consultant at Heath Hospital. Their weapons, missiles really, are damaged patients that they fire back and forth across the Hampstead Road in a dual for supremacy. Busner sends "Creosote Man", a schizoid "with a mission to bring creosote ideas to the rest of mankind" to Mukti for a second opinion. Mukti counters with Rocky, a "Humanoid time bomb with a frontal-lobe lesion" and dreadlocks that gush "from his high forehead like jets of gingerish flocculent water". And so it goes on until Darlene Davis, an anorexic Goth with "a haemoglobin level of six", turns up at St Mungo's. From hereon in things go from bad, to very, very much worse for the Mukti.
London's topography, or a grisly hallucinatory version of it, is etched in lurid detail, the doctors' ambits echoing their contrasts in status. Mukti, his neurosis, his home life and the Hindu community in London's north-western suburbs are observed with acuity. But Self's self-conscious style--the profusion of extraneous similes, metaphors and his recondite vocabulary--is draining to say the least; mouths are "pink baskets", cabbage is "craven" and even a lowly potato is "pusillanimous". Self aficionados, and those who relish seeing words such as "flocculent" liberated from the mustier nooks of the dictionary, won't fail to be delighted. --Travis Elborough
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
Book Description Soft Cover. Condition: new. Seller Inventory # 9780141040196
Book Description Condition: New. Dieser Artikel ist ein Print on Demand Artikel und wird nach Ihrer Bestellung fuer Sie gedruckt. Tells of duelling psychiatrists who use mental patients as weapons.A collection of savage stories. It features a story that tells of duelling psychiatrists who use mental patients as weapons.Dr Mukti and Other Tales of Woe - an astonishing. Seller Inventory # 594371452