The Book of Dave

Will Self, the incorrigible British journalist (infamous for allegedly shooting heroin on the British Prime Minister`s plane in 1997) and novelist, has, in THE BOOK OF DAVE, written a masterful satire of religion, a brilliant subversion of the English language, and, in his protagonist Dave, created one of recent literature`s most ribald heroes and least likely prophets. Dave, an East End cabbie, is a misanthropic bloke, sick to death with the riff-raff of the modern world, a loveable bastard struggling to keep his sanity under the dysfunctional yoke of his life. He fails, and in a delusional state has his raving printed on metal. Jump 500 years to the flooded future, and the people of the Island of Ham (read: Hampstead) have used Dave`s text as the cornerstone for their ludicrous theology, and the basis for their mangled English (example: fare has become the word for the soul). Self`s joke is so large, so cleverly crafted, so expansive, that it bursts free of mere conceit, and becomes a literary act of legerdemain worthy of Anthony Burgess or Jonathan Swift. Copyright (C) Muze Inc. 2005. For personal use only. All rights reserved.