Will Self

It’s loosely based on Wilde’s original, updated to 1980’s aristocratic, gay London. In a clever tweak, Dorian doesn’t just retain his good looks, he is the only one who doesn’t fall to the ravages of AIDS.

Just so you know what you’re in for if you start this novel:

While Dorian resumed lounging, Wotton crossed to where a table-top fridge resided on a gilt-painted escritoire. He opened it and retrieved a hypodermic, its plunger extended, its barrel full of red blood. ‘As if in anticipation, I was actually having a hit when the constabulary called on the related matter. I popped it in here to stop it clotting … there!’ With one fluid motion Wotton commenced injecting the room’s colour scheme into his main line. ‘Ah!’ he grunted. ‘Fixing coke is the perfect modern pleasure, because even as you do it you want to do it again. It’s like powdered greed dissolved in desire. All of human striving is here – measured out in millilitres.’

Dorian affected to ignore Wotton’s moustache of chemical sweat, just as he blanked the Z of pink water that the bandit sprayed on the wallpaper with his hollow épée.

Supercilious, bleakly camp prose, where the highbrow is gleefully shoved up the arse of the lowbrow. It never lets up. Even in the scene where Wotton dies – and after 250 pages you get fond of the old bugger – when his wife picks up the phone to inform the doctor:

The automatic switchboard put her on hold and she listened to the Four Seasons for what felt like three of them.