John Self

2 weeks ago | thecritic.co.uk | John Self

This article is taken from the April 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. The downside for a writer of a successful debut novel is the subsequent need to do their growing up in public. Fifty years ago, Martin Amis followed scabrous but fitfully brilliant The Rachel Papers with the scabrous but largely terrible Dead Babies.

3 weeks ago | ft.com | John Self

A high concept is an irresistible temptation for a writer: it encapsulates a book in one phrase and entices the reader with a single...

3 weeks ago | thecritic.co.uk | John Self

This article is taken from the April 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. When David Lodge tried to sell his breakthrough novel changing places to an American publisher, it was roundly rejected — 17 times — with one senior editor describing the book as “a very funny and lively example of a genre of English novel that is pure hell to do anything with here”.

3 weeks ago | theguardian.com | John Self

Sololand byHassan Blasim, translated by Jonathan Wright(Comma Press, £10.99) This exceptional trio of novellas about postwar Iraq is filled with comedy and horror. In the first story, a boy is abducted from his family to work for Isis. Tests on sharia law penalties are easy – the answer is usually “death” – but the work is hard: “[he] picked up the commander’s head, put it in an empty flour bag”.

1 month ago | thetimes.com | John Self