British curmudgeon Will Self's latest is an excellent farce about addiction: The Butt begins with Tom Brodzinski—who sounds an awful lot like the author—carelessly flicking his final cigarette over a balcony. Unfortunately, for him, he hits a tourist. As a result, he's charged with assault with a deadly weapon, and is forced to stand trial. (The verdict? You guessed it—Kafkaesque.) As per usual, the outlandish narrative is balanced by brutal critical riffs; here, Self's stand-in addresses everything from postcolonialism, liberalism, and bogus "belief systems" to the invasion of Iraq, all the while suffering from that "banal lust" for a cigarette. The author calls it a "nicotine craving that no quantity of actual nicotine could ever assuage"—and that's the fun part.
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