Dorian, an Imitation Dorian, an Imitation Dorian, an Imitation is a British novel by Will Self. The book is a modern take on Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray". The novel was originally published by Viking Press in 2002 and subsequently by Penguin in 2003. Self was originally asked to adapt the Wilde novel into a film screenplay, but this project did not come to fruition. Instead, Self took this uncompleted screenplay and re-worked it into a novel, which he described as "an imitation - and a homage" to the Wilde original. Self draws correlations between the life of his character Dorian
The Picture of Dorian Gray but when he looks he sees only an even uglier image of himself. From that, Dorian understands that his true motives for the self-sacrifice of moral reformation were the vanity and curiosity of his quest for new experiences, along with the desire to restore beauty to the picture. Deciding that only full confession will absolve him of wrongdoing, Dorian decides to destroy the last vestige of his conscience, and the only piece of evidence remaining of his crimes—the picture. In a rage, he takes the knife with which he murdered Basil Hallward, and stabs the picture. The servants of the