Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Why Read : Selected Writings 2001 - 2021 - Will Self

Why Read

Selected Writings 2001 - 2021

By: Will Self

Paperback | 2 January 2023

At a Glance

Paperback


$31.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $7.94 with

 or 

Ships in 10 to 15 business days

From the Booker-shortlisted author of Umbrella, a world-girdling collection of writings inspired by a life lived in and for literature.

'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

From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed 'the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation' by the Guardian, Will Self's Why Read is a cornucopia of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature.

Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusion zone of Chernobyl, to the Australian outback and to literary forms past and future. With his characteristic intellectual brio, Self aims his inimitable eye at titans of literature like Woolf, Kafka, Orwell and Conrad. He writes movingly on W.G. Sebald's childhood in Germany and provocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughs's Junky from shocking pulp novel to beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask readers how, what and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Whether he is writing on the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the nineteenth century or on the impossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online, Self's trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humour infuse every piece.

More in Reportage & Collected Journalism

The Mushroom Tapes : Conversations on a Triple Murder Trial - Helen Garner
100 Diaries That Chronicled World Events - Colin Salter

RRP $44.99

$35.75

21%
OFF
Earthquake : the election that shook Australia - Niki Savva

RRP $36.99

$26.75

28%
OFF
How Not to Be a Political Wife - Sarah Vine

RRP $45.00

$36.99

18%
OFF
The Strange Death of Europe : Immigration, Identity, Islam - Douglas Murray
Empire of Pain : The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty - Patrick Radden Keefe
The Times Cricket Grounds of the World - Richard Whitehead

RRP $52.99

$40.75

23%
OFF
Diddly Squat : A Year on the Farm - Jeremy Clarkson

RRP $26.99

$22.75

16%
OFF
I Feel Bad About My Neck : And Other Thoughts On Being a Woman - Nora Ephron
Breaking Awake : My Search For A New Life Through Drugs - P. E. Moskowitz
Diddly Squat : Home to Roost - Jeremy Clarkson

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
The Best of A. A. Gill - Adrian Gill

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Documentary Theatre and Performance : Forms of Drama - Andy Lavender
Under the Banner of Heaven : TV Tie-In - Jon Krakauer

RRP $24.99

$20.75

17%
OFF
The Rise and Fall of Australia : How a Great Nation Lost it's Way - Nick Bryant
Black Witness : Shortlisted for the 2025 Stella Prize - Amy McQuire
The Psychopath Test : A Journey Through the Madness Industry - Jon Ronson
What I Know for Sure - Oprah Winfrey

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Who is Government? : The Untold Story of Public Service - Michael Lewis