This episode was the novelist and essayist Will Self’s first live interview celebrating the publication of his new novel, The Quantity Theory of Morality. We hosted Will alongside our events collaborators for the evening, Special Rider Books and Records at Shepherd's Bush Market, on 23rd April. Will did not hold back on this one (did he ever?), and the longer you listen, the more apparent it is that his answers are in large part an attempt to hold the audience to account for the very social, political, and even theological malaise the book diagnoses in 21st Century British culture.
As for the plot of the novel, The Quantity Theory of Morality follows a familiar cast of middle-class, middle-English characters as they circle through endless dinner parties and polite conversation until the veneer of civility inevitably fractures and exposes the darkness that they hide in. A sequel to his award-winning debut The Quantity Theory of Insanity, the novel returns to Self’s enduring preoccupations: the fragility of morality, the absurdity of social conventions, and the alienation of modern life. Both deranged and hilarious, it confirms Self as a master of satire as well as one of our most searching critics of contemporary culture.
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