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The Butt by Will Self

The Butt begins with Tom Brodzinski, an American on vacation with his family in some third world country, deciding to give up smoking and flipping his last butt off his apartment balcony. Unfortunately, it fell on the head of another American, and his wound turned septic and required hospitalization. The victim is married, though, to a young, local woman. Being a member of Tayswengo tribe, she invokes local laws that require compensation for the injury suffered by one of her family. Tom is forced by local officials to travel to deep into the center of the country to make reparations. He's accompanied by an Englishman, Brian Prentice, who is also being sent to make reparations. Tom is unaware, though, of all that awaits him, including a civil war. Will Self's novel has received mostly positive reviews with The Telegraph saying, "Self writes here with an adroit impersonation of coarse exuberance that makes The Butt as readable as a blokeish airport novel (though with a fuddlingly large vocabulary). But just beneath the brash surface shimmer the unmistakable apparitions of Self's masters: Swift, Voltaire and Lewis Carroll are all partly responsible for the ingenious, mephitic invention that is The Butt."