Dorian: An Imitation

by WillSelf (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $3.25

  It is 1981 and the Royal Broodmare , as Henry Wotton calls her, is about to be married. Wotton, an uneasy homosexual and an egregious drug-addict, and his friend Baz have found a remarkable young man Dorian Gray, the epitome of male beauty. 16 years later and the Princess is dead. As the stock market soars and their T-cell counts plummet, what has happened to Henry and Baz? And how does Dorian remain so youthful? Will Self's excoriating new novel is set against the AIDS crises of the '80s and '90s, and is a shameless reworking of our most shameless classic novel.

• Used

  Paperback
  2003

  $3.25

  'Self's Dorian subtitles itself an imitation , and that it is exactly what it is, in the full Wildean sense. It flatters its original by taking both subject and style entirely seriously. The locations, characters, plot and epigrams are all transposed from the 1890s to the 1990s...Little is materially altered, but everything is reused - sharpened, blackened and intensified by Self's idiosyncratic remix of Wilde's combination of wit and rage, extravagant debauchery with clinical introspection...Self's reincarnation of Dorian has taken the fag ends of both an English century and an English myth and given them new, troubling and hugely entertaining life' - Guardian .

• Used

  Hardcover
  2002

  $15.42

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $16.03

  Dorian - Will Self's brilliant 'imitation' of Oscar Wilde's original tainted love story. Brutal, savage, infinitely readable . ( Observer ). Chilling, hysterical, tasteless and haunting. A Gothic thriller complementing and enriching its original . ( Independent on Sunday ). In the summer of 1981, aristocratic, drug-addicted Henry Wooten and Warhol-acolyte Baz Hallward meet Dorian Gray. Dorian is a golden adonis - perfect, pure and (so far) deliciously uncorrupted. The subject of Baz's video installation, Cathode Narcissus, and the object of Henry's attentions, Dorian is launched on a hedonistic binge that spans the '80s and '90s. But as Baz and Henry succumb to the disease du jour, how is it that Dorian, despite all his sexual and narcotic debauchery, remains so unsullied - so vibrantly alive? A book that filled its first reviewers with the odour of moral and spiritual putrefaction just got smellier, darker and funnier . ( Observer ). Dorian will be adored by fans of Will Self and Martin Amis and is an essential read for those who enjoyed The Picture of Dorian Gray . 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 .