From one of the most distinctive writers working today, dubbed 'the most daring and delightful novelist of his generation' by the Guardian, Will Self's Why Read collects twenty years of thoughtful and brilliantly witty essays, with subjects ranging from skyscrapers to typewriter repairmen to a trip to Chernobyl to the past and future of literature.

With his trademark intoxicating prose and mordant, energetic humour, Self considers titans of literature from Sebald to Woolf to Kafka, and asks readers how, what and ultimately why we should read in an ever-changing world. Why Read will satisfy both old and new readers of this icon of postmodernist literature.