Will Self (b. 1961) - journalist, former “restaurant critic”, columnist for the famous London newspapers “Evening Standard” and “Observer”, author of the novels “Cock and Bull” (1992), “ Monkeys" (Great Apes, 1997), "How the Dead Live" (2000), "Dorian" (Dorian, 2002). Critics compare him to Kafka, Swift and Martin Amis. Irony and gloomy grotesque, naturalism and phantasmagorism, woven into the fabric of traditional English storytelling - this is the calling card of Self the prose writer. In literary circles, he has a reputation as a master of shocking and sarcastic ridicule, whose imagination is uncontrollable. The novel “Monkeys” fully confirms this reputation.