Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet or computer - no Kindle device required. Learn more.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle Cloud Reader.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
The Book of Dave Paperback – 1 Mar. 2007
| Will Self (Author) See search results for this author |
| Amazon Price | New from | Used from |
|
Kindle Edition
"Please retry" | — | — |
|
Audible Audiobooks, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
£0.00
| Free with your Audible trial | |
|
Audio CD, Audiobook, CD, Unabridged
"Please retry" |
—
| — | — |
- Choose from over 20,000 locations across the UK
- FREE unlimited deliveries at no additional cost for all customers
- Find your preferred location and add it to your address book
- Dispatch to this address when you check out
Enhance your purchase
The Book of Dave is Booker-shortlisted author Will Self's dazzling sixth novel
What if a demented London cabbie called Dave Rudman wrote a book to his estranged son to give him some fatherly advice? What if that book was buried in Hampstead and hundreds of years later, when rising sea levels have put London underwater, spawned a religion? What if one man decided to question life according to Dave? And what if Dave had indeed made a mistake?
Shuttling between the recent past and a far-off future where England is terribly altered, The Book of Dave is a strange and troubling mirror held up to our times: disturbing, satirizing and vilifying who and what we think we are. At once a meditation upon the nature of received religion, a love story, a caustic satire of contemporary urban life and a historical detective story set in the far future - this compulsive novel will be enjoyed by readers everywhere, including fans of Martin Amis and Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange.
'Vivid, visceral and breathtakingly ambitious, this is Self's best yet' GQ
'Mindboggling ... darkly hilarious ... A fascinating book' Evening Standard
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.
- Print length512 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPenguin
- Publication date1 Mar. 2007
- Dimensions12.9 x 3 x 19.8 cm
- ISBN-100241954606
- ISBN-13978-0141014548
Frequently bought together

- +
- +
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Product description
About the Author
Product details
- ASIN : 0141014547
- Publisher : Penguin (1 Mar. 2007)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 512 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0241954606
- ISBN-13 : 978-0141014548
- Dimensions : 12.9 x 3 x 19.8 cm
- Best Sellers Rank: 47,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 849 in Dystopian
- 6,704 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- 10,579 in Contemporary Fiction (Books)
- Customer reviews:
About the author

Discover more of the author’s books, see similar authors, read author blogs and more
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings, help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyses reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonTop reviews from United Kingdom
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Two strands run through the book, one that is based in the future and one that is based in the present. The strand based in the present is about a taxi driver (Dave) and his life, whilst the future starnd is built around the teachings of that taxi driver which he lay down in a book - the book of Dave - which is seen as a kind of bible. Of the two I found the present day strand much more vibrant and interesting than the strand set in the future. The present day is one we all know well and doesn't need explaining, but with the future strand it's much more difficult to pull us into a manufactured world and create it as if it was one we all know well. The future strand although clever (the people speak a mix of cockney and mobile text language), I found that it was an overly simple world with not much going on plot wise.
Overall The book left me confused, it wasn't that great but not that bad, it was challenging yet simple. Though flawed this is a book that I will keep in my bookcase rather than give it to a charity shop like many lesser books.
A novel-ish novel, but too many twists and turns to make it truly enjoyable.
The idea of a future society based on the ramblings of a profligate appealed to me, but ultimately I wasn't overwhelmed with this book and was pretty relieved to get to the end.
The 'Mockney' was a bit of a challenge and pretty irritating at first, but eventaully you get accustomed to it. Reading this book was like jumping into a pool of icy cold water - a shock to the system. I can't remember the last time I read a book which was both challenging and enjoyable (although I'm not sure that enjoyable was quite the right word). I devoured this book rather than reading it, I could not put it down and it stays with me still.
Read it. You might hate it, but it will challenge you.








