How the Dead Live

How the Dead Live - Booker nominee Will Self's hilarious novel about the afterlife

'Scathingly entertaining' The Times

'Lily is a colossal heroine, a nighttown Molly Bloom ... What begins as a satiric novel of ideas ends as a surprisingly moving elegy' Guardian

Scabrous, vicious and unpleasant in life, Lily Bloom has not been improved by death. She has changed addresses, of course, and now inhabits a basement flat in Dulston - London's borough for those no longer troubled by breathing - but if anything her temperament has worsened. Finding it hard to deal with the (enforced) company of a calcified, pop-obsessed foetus, her dead, foul-mouthed son and three gruesome creatures made of her own unwanted fat, she must find something to do with her time. So how do the dead live? And what happens when they stop being dead?

'The work of a novelist writing at the height of his powers. It is a horror story, a love-me-do story, a full-frontal assault on the seven deadly sins - and a celebration of them. Lily may be an old cow but she's good company' 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.