Dr Mukti and Other Tales of Woe

Dr Mukti and Other Tales of Woe
Author: Will Self
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2013-10-03
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1408850516

Shiva Mukti is a hardworking and conscientious psychiatrist, who, in the inauspicious surroundings of St Mungo's - a central London hospital of more than average decrepitude - does his level best to staunch the flow of mental illness. But Mukti is not a happy man, beset by thwarted ambition and sexual frustration, he now finds himself in thrall to the more successful and urbane Dr Zack Busner, consultant psychiatrist at Heath Hospital, and an originator of the once modish Quantity Theory of Insanity. Why is it that Busner seems so intent on fostering a professional relationship with Mukti? Is it his way of putting his junior colleague in his place? Or is Busner - as Mukti begins to suspect - a member of a sinister cabal? And what about the schizophrenic patients Busner refers to Mukti for his opinion, are they merely sick people, or in fact human weapons in a bizarre psychological duel?

Shyness

Shyness
Author: Christopher Lane
Publisher: Yale University Press
Total Pages: 272
Release: 2008-10-01
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0300150288

Discusses the effects of expanding the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)'s fourth edition on the psychiatric community, pharmaceutical companies, and the nation.

Understanding Will Self

Understanding Will Self
Author: M. Hunter Hayes
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2007
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9781570036750

Understanding Will Self introduces readers to the satire and expressive ingenuity of a British writer who has garnered an array of awards since the 1991 publication of his first short story collection, The Quantity Theory of Sanity. In this guide to the well-received but largely unstudied writer, M. Hunter Hayes examines the key themes, narrative strategies, and cultural commentaries that characterize Self's work. Through close textual analyses, Hayes guides readers through the alternative universe of Self's writing and maps the interplay between his forays into journalism and fiction. Marked by their combination of seemingly improbable events and quotidian details, Self's novels, novellas, and short stories examine contemporary English life through a mode of writing that he has aptly termed dirty magical realism. Hayes shows how recurring characters have evolved through successive works and in relation with their environments.

Will Self and Contemporary British Society

Will Self and Contemporary British Society
Author: G. Matthews
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 204
Release: 2016-04-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137486562

This stimulating and comprehensive study of Will Self's work spans his entire career and offers insightful readings of all his fictional and non-fictional work up to and including his Booker prize nominated novel Umbrella.

Contemporary British Novelists

Contemporary British Novelists
Author: Nick Rennison
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 212
Release: 2004-12-31
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 113460470X

Featuring a broad range of contemporary British novelists from Iain Banks to Jeanette Winterson, Louis de Bernieres to Irvine Welsh and Salman Rushdie, this book offers an excellent introductory guide to the contemporary literary scene. Each entry includes concise biographical information on each of the key novelists and analysis of their major works and themes. Fully cross-referenced and containing extensive guides to further reading, Fifty Contemporary British Novelists is the ideal guide to modern British fiction for both the student and the contemporary fiction buff alike.

Writers Talk

Writers Talk
Author: Philip Tew
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 209
Release: 2008-05-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1441155171

Writers Talk includes interviews with Kate Atkinson, Pat Barker, Jonathan Coe, Jim Crace, Toby Litt, Graham Swift, Matt Thorne, David Mitchell, AlanWarner, and Will Self. "Is it a good time to be a writer in the time of The Da Vinci Code? It's not necessarily good time to be a literary writer."-Kate Atkinson "The best novels allow us to rehearse the world ahead of us, to play out the battle before we fight it, to experience disaster before we encounter it, to practice grief before it flattens us. Narrative is useful. It confers advantages on us as a species." -Jim Crace Why do writers write? How do they react to criticism of their work? What inspires them and how do go about working? Does fiction have any political, ethical or spiritual significance? Can we learn more about a book from its author? This collection of interviews with contemporary British novelists offers a fascinating insight into bestselling authors' views on fiction today; their influences and themes; readers and critics; why they write and their writing process; and provides a snapshot of the reality of living as a writer.

Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide

Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide
Author: Nick Rennison
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 497
Release: 2009-09-27
Genre: Reference
ISBN: 1408113988

Deciding what to read next when you've just finished an unputdownable novel can be a daunting task. The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide features hundreds of authors and thousands of titles, with navigation features to lead you on a rich journey through some the best literature to grace our shelves. This greatly expanded edition includes the latest contemporary authors and landmark novels, an expanded non-fiction section, a timeline setting historical events against literary milestones, prize-winner and book club lists. An accessible and easy-to-read guide that no serious book lover should be without. "The essential guide to the wild uncharted world of contemporary and 20th century writing." Robert McCrum, The Observer

The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English

The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English
Author: Dominic Head
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 1241
Release: 2006-01-26
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0521831792

This illustrated and fully updated Third Edition of The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English is the most authoritative and international survey of world literature in English available. The Guide covers everything from Old English to contemporary writing from all over the English-speaking world. There are entries on writers from Britain and Ireland, the USA, Canada, India, Africa, South Africa, New Zealand, the South Pacific and Australia, as well as on many important poems, novels, literary journals and plays. This new edition has been brought completely up to date with more than 280 new author entries, most of them for living authors. The general reader will find it fascinating to browse and to discover many new writers and works, while students will find it an invaluable resource for daily use. This is a unique work of reference for the twenty-first century that no reader or library should be without.

The Undivided Self

The Undivided Self
Author: Will Self
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 476
Release: 2010-10-26
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1596912979

This new volume of work from the British satirist draws selected short stories from his five previous collections, including The Quantity Theory of Insanity, Gray Area and Tough, Tough Toys for Tough, Tough Boys.

Contemporary Trauma Narratives

Contemporary Trauma Narratives
Author: Jean-Michel Ganteau
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2014-06-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1317684710

This book provides a comprehensive compilation of essays on the relationship between formal experimentation and ethics in a number of generically hybrid or "liminal" narratives dealing with individual and collective traumas, running the spectrum from the testimonial novel and the fictional autobiography to the fake memoir, written by a variety of famous, more neglected contemporary British, Irish, US, Canadian, and German writers. Building on the psychological insights and theorizing of the fathers of trauma studies (Janet, Freud, Ferenczi) and of contemporary trauma critics and theorists, the articles examine the narrative strategies, structural experimentations and hybridizations of forms, paying special attention to the way in which the texts fight the unrepresentability of trauma by performing rather than representing it. The ethicality or unethicality involved in this endeavor is assessed from the combined perspectives of the non-foundational, non-cognitive, discursive ethics of alterity inspired by Emmanuel Levinas, and the ethics of vulnerability. This approach makes Contemporary Trauma Narratives an excellent resource for scholars of contemporary literature, trauma studies and literary theory.