Since the appearance of The Quantity Theory of Insanity, his debut, highly-praised collection of short stories, Will Self has published prolifically, producing a further three short-story collections and five full-length novels - the most recent of which, How The Dead Live, was shortlisted in 2002 for the Whitbread novel award. His new novel, The Book of Dave, in which the rants of disgruntled London taxi driver Dave are discovered 500 years later and held up as a sacred religious text, will be published by Viking on June 1.
From this month, Bloomsbury will be publishing new paperback editions of Self's earlier books (to find out more, visit the Bloomsbury website). To mark its republication, Self has read an excerpt from his first and still one of his greatest short stories, The North London Book of the Dead. Click here to listen to the reading on your computer (MP3; 22), or paste http://blogs.theguardian.com/culturevulture/podcast.xml into the Podcasts bit of iTunes or your RSS reader, to subscribe to the Culture Vulture feed and receive all the Vulture's podcasts as they become available.
