The Book of Dave was published by Viking in 2006. Dave Rudman is a London taxi driver — divorced, bitter, mentally unstable, filled with rage at his ex-wife and the family courts that separated him from his son. In a manic episode, he inscribes his worldview onto metal plates and buries them in the garden of a house in Hampstead. Five hundred years later, after catastrophic flooding has reduced England to an archipelago, the plates are discovered and Dave’s rant — his misogyny, his cab driver’s encyclopedic knowledge of London streets, his fury — becomes the sacred text of a new religion.
The novel alternates between two timelines: Dave’s present-day story of breakdown and partial recovery, and the future society of “Ing” (England) where his words have been codified into a theocracy. In the future sections, the population lives under Dave’s “Knowledge” — children are separated from mothers at specified ages (per Dave’s custody grievances), the streets of submerged London are sacred geography, and “Driving” is priesthood. The language of the future sections is a patois derived from Dave’s text — Cockney rhyming slang fossilized into liturgy.
Self’s ambition here is enormous: the novel is simultaneously a study of mental illness, a satire on organized religion (how lunatic ravings become sacred writ through the accident of survival and the human need for authority), a domestic tragedy about divorce and fatherhood, and a speculative fiction about climate catastrophe. The dual-timeline structure allows Self to show cause and effect across centuries — every theological absurdity in the future has its origin in Dave’s specific, personal, pathetic grievances.
Collecting The Book of Dave
First edition (Viking, London, 2006): Cloth with dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition, fine/fine: $20–$50
- Very good: $10–$25