'Will Self may not be the last modernist at work but at the moment he's the mostfascinating of the tradition's torch bearers.' - New York From one of the most unusual and distinctive writers working today, dubbed 'the most daringand delightful novelist of his generation' by the Guardian, Will Self's Why Read is a cornucopiaof thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays on writing and literature. Self takes us with him: from the foibles of his typewriter repairman to the irradiated exclusionzone of Chernobyl, to the Australian outback and to literary forms past and future. With hischaracteristic 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 andprovocatively describes the elevation of William S. Burroughs's Junky from shocking pulp novelto beloved cult classic. Self also expands on his regular column in Literary Hub to ask readershow, what and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Whether he is writingon the rise of the bookshelf as an item of furniture in the nineteenth century or on theimpossibility of Googling his own name in a world lived online, Self's trademark intoxicatingprose and mordant, energetic humour infuse every piece.