"Smart, beguiling and occasionally stomach-turning . . . Simultaneously Dickensian and Burroughsian; grotesque comedy narrated in ornate prose."--New York Times Book Review

"Ecstatically evoking miasma, Self's prose is feral in pace, always zeroing in for the kill."--New Yorker

"[Liver is] almost as charming as it is aggressive . . . These are for those who like their stories brainy, cunning, hard-edged and diabolical."--Washington Post

"Tremendous fun, and sometimes much more than that. Self has always had a blunt brilliance, but he's most interesting when he pauses to explore fragility, and not only to burst those bubbles. These stories are busy with stylistic experiment, high-concept in-jokes, verbal impasto and flights of fancy . . . which test the limits of narrative."--Guardian

"A handsomely presented collection of four interconnected novellas . . . Pickled, engorged, fatty, tumor-troubled, cirrhotic and variously damaged livers unite a cast of grotesques, saved from caricaturisation by lashings of significant detail . . . It is cerebral stuff, but its impact is positively visceral. Reading it is enough to make one feel jaundiced, bilious and sore-livered. This, by the way, is meant as a compliment to one of the most manically imaginative writers at work today."--Financial Times

"For all the extravagant, cartoonish hideousness of the worlds many of Self's characters inhabit--from Soho drinking clubs to Kensington crack houses--life remains something precious . . . Self's London has the qualities of the eponymous vital organ."--Independent

"All of Self's hallmarks are in place here: a prose style that scuds from the slangy to the hypertrophic and back; a keen sense of place; a sharp satirist's eye coldly cast on fashionable London; and a fondness for what might be called the High Concept"--Times Literary Supplement

"The reliably diabolical Self delivers four longish stories about decay, debauchery and deliverance . . . Self's parts function quite well together to produce a picture of putrid beauty."--Publishers Weekly

"Wit, furious energy, an idiosyncratic intellect and ornate, often strong language mark this British writer's darkly offbeat fiction . . . Brilliant and blistering."--Kirkus Reviews

"In his latest collection, Self again writes of drug addiction and egos and the destruction of the titular organ . . . Each story has a distinctive voice--Self employs linguistic bravado in all."--Library Journal