Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe

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Dr. Mukti and Other Tales of Woe is a short story collection by Will Self. It is his sixth collection and was published in 2004 by Bloomsbury. The book has 272 pages.

The stories follow Dr. Shiva Mukti, a overworked psychiatrist in London. He starts trading patients with another psychiatrist, Dr. Zack Busner, who is in poor health but still plotting revenge against Mukti.

Key stories include:
- A young boy on the run hides in an old man’s flat. As the old man’s vision fails, the boy begins to see the world from a different, higher viewpoint.
- A weekend dad wanders with his child through parks and wonders if he could fake his own suicide to escape the Child Support Agency.
- Two men pretend to be other people as they talk.
- A return to the world first shown in Self’s earlier novel Great Apes, featuring the character Simon Dykes.

Reception:
- The Guardian praised the collection, saying the stories reveal a big loss and misplacement of humanity, and that they explore what it means to be a satirist, sometimes looking down on people as if from orbit.
- The Daily Telegraph was harsher, calling Will Self’s work at the time not funny or clever and, overall, a mess. It noted that Self had earlier successes with books like Cock and Bull and How the Dead Live.