New Releases by Howard Jacobson

Love can change your life. Can it survive it? 'Howard Jacobson at his finest' LINDA GRANT, author of The Story of the Forest 'How is it possible to read him and not lose oneself in admiration' THE TIMES Lily falls in love with Sam the minute she sets eyes on him. It takes Sam a day or two longer. Curious, because Lily – independent, headstrong, rational – has never quite believed in love; while Sam – confident, passionate, romantic – thought he understood it inside out. Lily is an award-winning television documentary maker. Sam is an award-winning playwright. Both are in relationships that have quietly expired, but their encounter makes Lily and Sam come alive again. As they begin to work together on the page and on screen, an affair takes hold that they are powerless to resist. Arriving in mid-life, their relationship opens unexpected new worlds and, for Lily, offers her a surprising form of liberation. But what will happen to them when familiarity, illness and age begin to take their toll? What will survive? Taking us to the edge of desire, love and betrayal across a lifetime, What Will Survive of Us reveals what is left of us when we strip away every layer.

'One of the all-time great memoirs' Daily Telegraph 'Wonderful...candid, shrewd and moving' William Boyd 'Laugh-out-loud glorious and uproarious' Simon Schama Howard Jacobson's funny, revealing and tender memoir of his path to becoming a writer. Howard Jacobson was forty when his first novel was published. In Mother's Boy, he traces the life that brought him there. Born into a working-class Jewish family in 1940s Manchester, he did not lack encouragement or subject matter. Jacobson takes us from childhood and studying at Cambridge, through landing in Sydney as a maverick young professor, and on to his first marriage and the birth of his son. Later, he begins new - and often surprising - ventures in places as disparate as London, Wolverhampton, Boscastle and Melbourne. Infused with bittersweet memories of Jacobson's parents and friends, this is the story of a writer's beginnings, and of learning to understand who you are before you can become the writer you were meant to be. 'Hilariously brilliant' David Baddiel 'Howard Jacobson brilliantly transforms calamity into rip-roaring comedy' Craig Brown, Mail on Sunday

If you're obese, you probably don't see yourself as an athlete. You may think that you're lazy, unmotivated, and undisciplined - and beat yourself up for not having the strength of will to lose the weight. I'm here to tell you that the opposite is true; despite what the naysayers have been telling you for years, you are actually working much harder than any of your skinny friends. You've been carrying a human weight vest, and it's made you strong. But you've also been carrying the unkind and destructive words that people have hurt you with, and they have made you weak. I was a fat guy - 420 pounds or more at my heaviest (that's an estimate - you know fat people don't step on scales!), and I had lost and regained a hundred pounds at least five times before I finally figured out what was missing. Before I embraced both weights - the physical and the psychological - and used them to build the body and mind that I could be proud of.This book is my attempt to give you the uncensored straight talk about how to lose a lot of weight, and what it's actually like. I was shocked to discover that not everything got better or felt better when I grew lean. I discovered that many of the strategies I used to lose the weight didn't work to keep it off. I found that focusing on positivity all the time was a bad idea; that I could embrace the anger at how I'd been treated as a fat person to transform myself. If you're squeamish about frank and vulgar language, put the book down now. It's not for you.But if you're ready to hear the rough, unvarnished, and ultimately liberating truth, I'll hold nothing back.You'll discover how to use the weight to lose the weight - and gain your life.

From the Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question and J, and one of “our funniest writers alive” (Allison Pearson): a wickedly observed novel of old age and new love. At the age of ninety-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything—including her own children. Her tongue, meanwhile, remains as sharp as ever. She spends her days stitching macabre messages into her needlework and tormenting her two long-suffering carers with tangled stories of her love affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walk without the aid of a frame, and speak without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he’s whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. Unlike Beryl, he forgets nothing—especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has hung over him ever since. There’s very little life remaining for either of them, but perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way and find new meaning in what’s left. Could this be their chance to live a little? Told with Jacobson’s trademark wit and style, Live a Little is equal parts funny, irreverent, and tender—a novel to make you consider all the paths not taken, and whether you could still change course. Advance praise for Live a Little “One of the great comic geniuses of our time.”—Lit Hub “A tender story of unlikely love . . . Jacobson treats with compassion the dilemma of old age. . . . Wise, witty, and deftly crafted.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) “For all of its moments of bleakness, and the occasional flicker of genuine terror, it’s rarely less than bitterly funny in its determination to face up to the obliteration that awaits us all.”—The Guardian “What a relief to come on a novel which invites you to smile and even laugh.”—The Scotsman “The novel’s brilliant cover tells it all: hearts and skulls, love and death.”—The Jewish Chronicle “A thoroughly enjoyable read. For a literature snob and a language obsessive . . . there is a lot to feast on . . . for someone looking for an emotionally honest storyline, the book also delivers. Live a Little is about growing old, but it’s also about gender, race, love and politics.”—Independent “Tender and funny.”—Grazia

If you're overweight or obese...If you're constantly tired, bloated, constipated, achy, sluggish, depressed, or anxious...If you're diabetic or pre-diabetic...If your doctor keeps warning you about the risk of cancer, heart disease, or other lifestyle- reversible calamity...If you're constantly worried about your blood pressure, weight, insomnia, eating habits... But you still find it next to impossible to stick to a healthy diet, exercise, and lifestyle plan... Then you might be going about things the wrong way.Let's face it - despite a flood of information and advice, we're getting sicker and fatter all the time. That's because the vast majority of "conventional" advice is outdated, wrong-headed, and just plain ineffective.Within this storm of bad news and bad advice, there's a growing tribe of outliers who have managed to lose hundreds of pounds, reverse "impossible to cure" diseases, and even - to their own shock and delight - become fit and high-performing athletes.Their stories don't get a lot of media attention, because they aren't selling anything. No pills, powders, or potions. No expensive workout gadgets. No late night informercial magic formulas.They simply rediscovered some basic, natural truths about the human animal. What we're designed to eat. How we're designed to move. And how we're meant to think and feel.When we get away from our natural heritage, we suffer. When we return to it, we thrive.Read Sick To Fit to discover how Josh LaJaunie went from a 420-pound food addict to the cover of Runner's World magazine, as well as live appearances on Good Morning America and The Today Show.Discover the simple secrets for a healthy life that have transformed dozens of members of the Missing Chins Run Club and clients of WellStart Health from sick and sad to fit and fulfilled.In Sick To Fit, you'll learn: - the one food rule that banishes confusion, eliminates the need to count calories or restrict portion size, and makes you impervious to the marketing and clickbait BS perpetrated by the food industry- how to honor your culture and heritage without suffering from the diseases that are killing your people (coming from the Bayou of South Louisiana, Josh knows a thing or two about being a foodie)- how to use social and family pressure to get stronger and more committed- how to prevent self-sabotage after initial success- how to start exercising safely if you're overweight (by 20 or 200 pounds)- the four-question FAST Assessment (the "Swiss Army Knife" of sustainable behavior change)- how to master life's stressors so they don't turn into binges- how to never "fall off the wagon" again - even if you've failed at dozens of diets before- and much more...Written with behavioral health expert Howard Jacobson, PhD, Sick To Fit combines Josh's journey with cutting edge nutritional, exercise, neurological, and habit science.Sick To Fit is your roadmap to better health and a more joyful life."Sick To Fit is a captivating, inspiring and practical story of an epic transformation. And don't be deceived by how entertaining this page-turner of a book is. What you're about to have fun reading is scientifically proven, and it just might change your life."Ocean Robbins, Author, 31-Day Food Revolution CEO, Food Revolution Network http: //foodrevolution.org"A diet book with lots of information leaves you with lots of information. But a book that teaches you how to change your dietary and lifestyle habits - and do it in a way that is compelling, engaging, and eminently practical - a book like that can change your life."Sick to Fit takes everything that we know about what makes people change in business and life, and applies it to eating and lifestyle habits. I've read a tremendous number of books on diet, fitness, and health - and this one is the best."Peter Bregman, Author, Leading with Emotional Courage, CEO, Bregman Partners http: //peterbregman.com

A provocatively entertaining, savagely funny satire on Donald Trump by Britain’s greatest comic novelist. Pussy is the story of Prince Fracassus, heir presumptive to the Duchy of Origen, famed for its golden-gated skyscrapers and casinos, who passes his boyhood watching reality shows on TV, imagining himself to be the Roman Emperor Nero, and fantasizing about hookers. He is idle, boastful, thin-skinned and egotistic; has no manners, no curiosity, no knowledge, no idea and no words in which to express them. Could he, in that case, be the very leader to make the country great again?

_______________ ''[An] acutely observed collection of occasional pieces that pick at absurdist life and reveal him to be a quiz, a cultural critic gifted with precise comic timing'' - The Times ''The author''s prose is always a delight ... a book that manages the high-wire act of being genuinely funny while dispensing genuine wisdom'' - Times Literary Supplement ''Jacobson is one of the great sentence-builders of our time. I feel I have to raise my game, even just to praise ... In short, he is one of the great guardians of language and culture - all of it. Long may he flourish'' - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian _______________ Week after week, for eighteen years, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson wrote a weekly column for the Independent, reflecting in inimitable style on the sacred and the profane in turn, the frivolous and the serious, the deeply personal and the most universal. The shame and humiliation inherent in death is explored with frank astuteness. Matisse, darts and the power of love are celebrated; while cyclists are very much censured. And meanwhile, a beloved old Labrador walks his last walk as life elsewhere hurtles on and away... The Dog''s Last Walk is a collection of wisdom and iconoclasm for our uncertain times, and one that reveals one of our greatest writers in all his humanity. _______________ ''Sharp and playful, surreal and thoughtful, and occasionally ... rather moving'' - New Statesman ''Yes, Jacobson is an entertainer ... And he does indeed entertain, but in a way that stimulates rather than simply amuses'' - Sunday Telegraph ''His columns were always one of the best things in [the Independent] – funny, argumentative, contrary and stuffed with ideas as well as a big, sympathetic personality'' - Philip Hensher, Spectator

Oliver Walzer is shy, bookish, Jewish. He doesn’t know how to talk to girls. But he can slice, flick and spin a ping pong ball better than any teenager in Manchester. Oliver channels his frustrated adolescent lust into the game he loves. That is until the heartbreaking Lorna Peachley and the prospect of a place at Cambridge take his eye off the ball.

An acclaimed surgeon specializing in weight loss delivers a paradigm-shifting examination of the diet and health industry’s focus on protein, explaining why it is detrimental to our health, and can prevent us from losing weight. Whether you are seeing a doctor, nutritionist, or a trainer, all of them advise to eat more protein. Foods, drinks, and supplements are loaded with extra protein. Many people use protein for weight control, to gain or lose pounds, while others believe it gives them more energy and is essential for a longer, healthier life. Now, Dr. Garth Davis, an expert in weight loss asks, “Is all this protein making us healthier?” The answer, he emphatically argues, is NO. Too much protein is actually making us sick, fat, and tired, according to Dr. Davis. If you are getting adequate calories in your diet, there is no such thing as protein deficiency. The healthiest countries in the world eat far less protein than we do and yet we have an entire nation on a protein binge getting sicker by the day. As a surgeon treating obese patients, Dr. Davis was frustrated by the ever-increasing number of sick and overweight patients, but it wasn''t until his own health scare that he realized he could do something about it. Combining cutting-edge research, with his hands-on patient experience and his years dedicated to analyzing studies of the world’s longest-lived populations, this explosive, groundbreaking book reveals the truth about the dangers of protein and shares a proven approach to weight loss, health, and longevity.

A series of letters purportedly written by Penelope, Dido, Medea, and other heroines to their lovers, the Heroides represents Ovid''s initial attempt to revitalize myth as a subject for literature. In this book, Howard Jacobson examines the first fifteen elegaic letters of the Heroides. In his critical evaluation, Professor Jacobson takes into consideration the twofold nature of the work: its existence as a single entity with uniform poetic structure and coherent goals, and its existence as a collection of fifteen individual poems. Thus, fifteen chapters are devoted to a thorough analysis and interpretation of the particular poems, while six additional chapters are concerned with problems that pertain to the work as a whole, such as the nature of the genre, the role of rhetoric, theme, and variation, and the originality of Ovid. Special attention is given to the application of modern psychological criticism to the delineations of the pathological psyche in the letters. In an additional chapter on the chronology of Ovid''s early amatory poetry, the author challenges and revises the traditional dating of the Heroides. Originally published in 1974. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Finalist for the 2014 Man Booker Prize “J is a snarling, effervescent, and ambitious philosophical work of fiction that poses unsettling questions about our sense of history, and our self-satisfied orthodoxies. Jacobson’s triumph is to craft a novel that is poignant as well as troubling from the debris.” —Independent (UK) Man Booker Prize–winner Howard Jacobson’s brilliant and profound new novel, J, “invites comparison with George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World” (Sunday Times, London). Set in a world where collective memory has vanished and the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited, J is a boldly inventive love story, both tender and terrifying. Kevern Cohen doesn’t know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a word starting with a J. It wasn’t then, and isn’t now, the time or place to be asking questions. When the extravagantly beautiful Ailinn Solomons arrives in his village by a sea that laps no other shore, Kevern is instantly drawn to her. Although mistrustful by nature, the two become linked as if they were meant for each other. Together, they form a refuge from the commonplace brutality that is the legacy of a historic catastrophe shrouded in suspicion, denial, and apology, simply referred to as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED. To Ailinn’s guardian, Esme Nussbaum, Ailinn and Kevern are fragile shoots of hopefulness. As this unusual pair’s actions draw them into ever-increasing danger, Esme is determined to keep them together—whatever the cost. In this stunning, evocative, and terribly heartbreaking work, where one couple’s love affair could have shattering consequences for the human race, Howard Jacobson gathers his prodigious gifts for the crowning achievement of a remarkable career.

Kevern doesn’t know why his father made him put two finger across his lips whenever he began a word with a J. It wasn’t then, and isn’t now, the time or place for asking questions. Ailinn, too, has grown up in the dark about who she is and where she comes from. The past is a dangerous country, not to be visited or talked about. She is new to the village; Kevern has lived here, in half-hiding, all his life. They feel a surge of protectiveness for each other the moment they meet. On their first date, Kevern kisses the bruises under her eyes. He doesn’t ask who did it. Brutality has grown commonplace. They aren’t sure whether they have fallen in love of their own accord or whether they’ve been pushed into each other’s arms. But who would have pushed them, and why?

By now, the low-carb diet''s refrain is a familiar one: Bread is bad for you. Fat doesn''t matter. Carbs are the real reason you can''t lose weight. The low-carb universe Dr. Atkins brought into being continues to expand. Low-carb diets, from South Beach to the Zone and beyond, are still the go-to method for weight-loss for millions. These diets'' marketing may differ, but they all share two crucial components: the condemnation of “carbs" and an emphasis on meat and fat for calories. Even the latest diet trend, the Paleo diet, is—despite its increased focus on (some) whole foods—just another variation on the same carbohydrate fears. In The Low-Carb Fraud, longtime leader in the nutritional science field T. Colin Campbell (author of The China Study and Whole) outlines where (and how) the low-carb proponents get it wrong: where the belief that carbohydrates are bad came from, and why it persists despite all the evidence to the contrary. The foods we misleadingly refer to as “carbs" aren''t all created equal—and treating them that way has major consequences for our nutritional well-being. If you''re considering a low-carb diet, read this e-book first. It will change the way you think about what you eat—and how you should be eating, to lose weight and optimize your health, now and for the long term.

The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question went Down Under, and this is what he hilariously found. On what he calls “the adventure of his life,” Howard Jacobson travels around Australia, never entirely sure where he is heading next or whether he has the courage to tackle the wild life of the bush, the wild men of the outback, or the even wilder women of the seaboard cities. In pursuit of the best of Australian good times, he joins revelers at Uluru, argues with racists in the Kimberleys, parties with winegrowers in the Barossa, and falls for ballet dancers in Perth. And even as vexed questions of national identity and Aboriginal land rights present themselves, his love for Australia and Australians never falters.

Marvin Kreitman, the luggage baron of South London, lives for sex. Or at least he lives for women. At present he loves four women--his mother, his wife Hazel, and his two daughters--and is in love with five more. Charlie Merriweather, on the other hand, nice Charlie, loves just the one woman, also called Charlie, the wife with whom he has been writing children''s books and having nice sex for twenty years. Once a week the two friends meet for a Chinese lunch, contriving never quite to have the conversation they would like to have--about fidelity and womanizing, and which makes you happier. Until today. It is Charlie who takes the dangerous step of asking for a piece of Marvin''s disordered life, but what follows embroils them all, the wives no less than the husbands. And none of them will ever be the same again.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER What happens when you eat an apple? The answer is vastly more complex than you imagine. Every apple contains thousands of antioxidants whose names, beyond a few like vitamin C, are unfamiliar to us, and each of these powerful chemicals has the potential to play an important role in supporting our health. They impact thousands upon thousands of metabolic reactions inside the human body. But calculating the specific influence of each of these chemicals isn''t nearly sufficient to explain the effect of the apple as a whole. Because almost every chemical can affect every other chemical, there is an almost infinite number of possible biological consequences. And that''s just from an apple. Nutritional science, long stuck in a reductionist mindset, is at the cusp of a revolution. The traditional “gold standard" of nutrition research has been to study one chemical at a time in an attempt to determine its particular impact on the human body. These sorts of studies are helpful to food companies trying to prove there is a chemical in milk or pre-packaged dinners that is “good" for us, but they provide little insight into the complexity of what actually happens in our bodies or how those chemicals contribute to our health. In The China Study, T. Colin Campbell (alongside his son, Thomas M. Campbell) revolutionized the way we think about our food with the evidence that a whole food, plant-based diet is the healthiest way to eat. Now, in Whole, he explains the science behind that evidence, the ways our current scientific paradigm ignores the fascinating complexity of the human body, and why, if we have such overwhelming evidence that everything we think we know about nutrition is wrong, our eating habits haven''t changed. Whole is an eye-opening, paradigm-changing journey through cutting-edge thinking on nutrition, a scientific tour de force with powerful implications for our health and for our world.

Reading is over. Writing is finished. Publishing is dead. Embittered author Guy Ableman knows this, as does his desperate editor; as does the sad whole of doomed literary London. But Guy is dedicated to his dying art, and continues to write for an audience that doesn''t exist, loathed by the few readers he does have - feminists who charge him with misogyny, mothers who accuse him of hating children. His vivacious wife Vanessa, a strikingly beautiful red-head, contrary, highly strung and often blazingly angry, is another source of pain, as is her alluring mother Poppy. More like sisters than mother and daughter, they come as a pair, a blistering presence. And Guy is, from the off, as captivated by his mother-in-law as he is by his wife... Against a backdrop of disappointment, failure and loss, in a world in which food and fashion have long since trampled fiction into the ground, Guy is consumed with the temptation of an illicit affair. It distorts every thought in his head, and becomes his next great novel. Fantasy blurs with reality in this furious, hilarious novel about love, loss, mothers and daughters. Frank, poignant and moving, Zoo Time is our funniest writer at his brilliant best.

Novelist Guy Ableman is in thrall to his vivacious wife Vanessa, a strikingly beautiful red-head, contrary, highly strung and blazingly angry. The trouble is, he is no less in thrall to her alluring mother, Poppy. More like sisters than mother and daughter, they come as a pair, a blistering presence that destroys Guy''s peace of mind, suggesting the wildest stories but making it impossible for him to concentrate long enough to write any of them. Not that anyone reads Guy anyway. Not that anyone is reading anything. Reading, Guy fears, is finished. His publisher, fearing the same, has committed suicide. His agent, like all agents, is in hiding. Vanessa, in the meantime, is writing a novel of her own. Guy doesn''t expect her to finish it, or even start it, but he dreads the consequences if she does. In flight from personal disappointment and universal despair, Guy wonders if it''s time to take his love for Poppy to another level. Fiction might be dead, but desire isn''t. And out of that desire he imagines squeezing one more great book. By turns angry, elegiac, and rude, Zoo Time is a novel about love-love of women, love of literature, love of laughter. It shows our funniest writer at his brilliant best.

It takes a particular kind of man to want an embroidered polo player astride his left nipple. Occasionally, when I am tired and emotional, or consumed with self-dislike, I try to imagine myself as someone else, a wearer of Yarmouth shirts and fleecy sweats, of windbreakers and rugged Tyler shorts, of baseball caps with polo players where the section of the brain that concerns itself with aesthetics is supposed to be. But the hour passes. Good men return from fighting Satan in the wilderness the stronger for their struggle, and so do I. The winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, Howard Jacobson, brims with life in this collection of his most acclaimed journalism. From the unusual disposal of his father-in-law''s ashes and the cultural wasteland of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang to the melancholy sensuality of Leonard Cohen and desolation of Wagner''s tragedies, Jacobson writes with all the thunder and joy of a man possessed. Absurdity piles upon absurdity, and glorious sentences weave together to create a hilarious, heartbreaking and uniquely human collection. This book is not just a series of parts, but an irresistible, unputdownable sum which triumphantly out-Thurbers Thurber.

Exploring the career of artist and environmentalist Kurt Jackson, this publication has at its centre the artist and the natural world. Jackson's paintings are set in places that he has travelled to and explored regularly, and are created by an individual with a deep understanding of natural history and ecology.

Frank Ritz is a television critic. His partner, Melissa Paul, is the author of pornographic novels for liberated women. He watches crap all day; she writes crap all day. It''s a life. Or it was a life. But now they''re fighting, locked in oral combat. He won''t shut up and she is putting her finger down her throat again. So there''s only one thing for it -- Frank has to go. But go where? And do what? Frank Ritz has been in heat more or less continuously since he could speak his own name. Let him out of the house and his first instinct is to go looking for sex. Deviant sex. treacherous sex, even straight sex, so long as it''s immoderate--he''s never been choosy. But what happens when sex is all you know but no longer what you want?

A scorching story of friendship and loss, exclusion and belonging, and of the wisdom and humanity of maturity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.

"He should have seen it coming. His life had been one mishap after another. So he should have been prepared for this one..." Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular and disappointed BBC worker, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite a prickly relationship and very different lives, they''ve never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, a Czechoslovakian always more concerned with the wider world than with exam results. Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and with Treslove, his chequered and unsuccessful record with women rendering him an honorary third widower, they dine at Libor''s grand, central London apartment. It''s a sweetly painful evening of reminiscence in which all three remove themselves to a time before they had loved and lost; a time before they had fathered children, before the devastation of separations, before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it. Better, perhaps, to go through life without knowing happiness at all because that way you had less to mourn? Treslove finds he has tears enough for the unbearable sadness of both his friends'' losses. And it''s that very evening, at exactly 11:30pm, as Treslove hesitates a moment outside the window of the oldest violin dealer in the country as he walks home, that he is attacked. After this, his whole sense of who and what he is will slowly and ineluctably change. The Finkler Question is a scorching story of exclusion and belonging, justice and love, ageing, wisdom and humanity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best.

The Exagoge is a drama on the theme of the Jewish Exodus written during the second century BC by Ezekiel, who emerges as a tragedian of significance.

In a stunning follow-up to his much-heralded masterpiece, Kalooki Nights, acclaimed author Howard Jacobson has turned his mordant and uncanny sights on Felix Quinn, a rare-book dealer living in London, whose wife Marisa is unfaithful to him. All husbands, Felix maintains, secretly want their wives to be unfaithful to them. Felix hasn''t always thought this way. From the moment of his first boyhood rejection, surviving the shattering effects of love and jealousy had been the study of his life. But while he is honeymooning with Marisa in Florida an event occurs that changes everything. In a moment, he goes from dreading the thought of someone else''s hands on the woman he loves to thinking about nothing else. Enter Marius into Marisa''s affections. And now Felix must wonder if he really is a happy man. The Act of Love is a haunting novel of love and jealousy, with stylish prose that crackles and razor-sharp dialogue, praised by the London Times as "darkly transgressive, as savage in its brilliance, as anything Jacobson has written." It is a startlingly perceptive, subtle portrait of a marriage and an excruciatingly honest, provocative exploration of sexual obsession.

Longlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize and hailed by "The Times" (London) as Ra work of genius, S Jacobson''s exquisitely written, audaciously funny novel explores the countless questions of postwar Jewish identity.

Man Booker Prize–Winning Author of THE FINKLER QUESTION Swathed in his kimono, drinking tea from his samovar, Henry Nagle is temperamentally opposed to life in the 21st century. Preferring not to contemplate the great intellectual and worldly success of his best boyhood friend, he argues constantly with his father, an upholsterer turned fire-eater–and now dead for many years. When he goes out at all, Henry goes after other men’s wives. But when he mysteriously inherits a sumptuous apartment, Henry’s life changes, bringing on a slick descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson, an excitable red setter, and a wise-cracking waitress with a taste for danger. All of them demand his attention, even his love, a word which barely exists in Henry’s magisterial vocabulary, never mind his heart. From one of England’s most highly regarded writers, The Making of Henry is a ravishing novel, at once wise, tender and mordantly funny.