Before being arrested, Symun conceives a son, Carl, who becomes an object of interest to Antone Böm, an exiled heretic. The potential of rising sea-levels to make a future Atlantis out of London and East Anglia is an alluring concept. On the isolated island of Ham, a tiny community ekes out an existence from the land, assisted by semi-intelligent pig-like creatures known as 'motos' that are unique to the island.

The present-day story tells the tale of a London cabbie, Dave Rudman, a somewhat pathetic character who it seems you are to both pity and feel disgusted by, as he meets a woman, has a son, gets divorced, and has a total mental breakdown. In this examination of fatherhood and other themes, Self pursues twin timelines separated by a couple of millennia of history and apocalyptic climate change trauma, but connected by the eponymous Book of Dave. The island in the novel is inspired by the hilltop town of Hampstead in London and its famous parkland Hampstead Heath. As I struggled with page after page of dialect I kept worrying whether it was me, have I become a lazy reader unable to give an intelligent book the attention it deserves, or has Will Self just gone a step too far?The inhabitants of this area, unaware that the drowned city of London is so close by, know their island as Ham. The rest of London is flooded, and Dave's book has been discovered several hundred years ago before, and somehow, the ravings of a depressed cabbie have spawned an entire religion. This PhD will involve me reading a lot of climate fiction novels as well as thinking and writing about the ways in which they address aspects of climate change.

Putting these two subjective points aside (explained in the full review), The Book of Dave is a wickedly clever satirical novel that presents a humane and fallible protagonist (Dave) in a funny, albeit sometime depressing, vision of our possible future. Equally influential in Dave's book is The Knowledge—the intimate familiarity with the city of London required of its cabbies. These echo the talking cow that Douglas Adams regaled his readers with in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.This is a book in my favourite genre of "annoying pretentious fuckery", which took me too long to read, but was definitely worth it. All in all, it was as annoying as the first chapters hinted to (which is ok) and a bit less pretentious than would appear from its opening (which is a pity). Luckily there is Arpee, sophisticated speech (opposite of Mokni) in which narrator of the book speaks.

When she’s not writing she is usually reading, dreaming about living on a boat or eating Jaffa Cakes.Eric and Dave is the story of Eric Gill and Dave Hollins, two ex-goalkeepers now aged 91 and 84 respectively. Life is primitive on Ham, they look forward to the day they can be in Nu Lundun, and fear plays a large part in all. something about the whole Biting Nihilistic Satire school of lit I guess just feels very limited to me.