Best Selling Books by Howard Jacobson

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 wine-growers 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.

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.

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.

From a Booker Prize-winning author, an “informed and witty” travelogue exploring America, Israel, Lithuania, and the nature of Jewish identity (Publishers Weekly). Howard Jacobson had been hoping to make a journey to Lithuania to search for his Jewish roots. So when the BBC offered to send him around the globe to report on a variety of Jewish communities, he accepted. The trip he recounts in this memoir takes him to New York City, where tension simmers between Jews and African Americans; to California, where he visits a gay synagogue; to Israel, where he encounters the spectrum of Jewishness from Orthodox right-wing hardliners to tolerant, peace-loving kibbutzniks. And ultimately, to Lithuania, the land of his forefathers, where he discovers that antisemitism still lurks. “A lively, irreverent but ultimately serious account of a British Jew’s search for his roots.” —Elizabeth Benedict, The New York Times “Profound and moving.” —Publishers Weekly

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.

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.

Julian Treslove, a radio producer, and Samuel Finkler, a Jewish philosopher, have been friends since childhood and, as they enter middle age, they reminisce over their struggles with self-identity, anti-Semitism, women, love, and the past.

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

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.

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.

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?

Story of Cain and Abel, told from the point of view of Cain, alternating Cain''s narrative with chapters set in Babel, where storytellers gather to tell of the past and the future.

De overtuiging dat hij de reïncarnatie is van de 19e eeuwse auteur Thomas Hardy wordt voor een jonge man tot een obsessie die zijn leven gaat beheersen.

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.

_______________ ''[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

Man Booker Prize-winner Howard Jacobson brings his singular brilliance to this modern re-imagining of one of Shakespeare’s most unforgettable characters: Shylock Winter, a cemetery, Shylock. In this provocative and profound interpretation of The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is juxtaposed against his present-day counterpart in the character of art dealer and conflicted father Simon Strulovitch. With characteristic irony, Jacobson presents Shylock as a man of incisive wit and passion, concerned still with questions of identity, parenthood, anti-Semitism and revenge. While Strulovich struggles to reconcile himself to his daughter Beatrice''s “betrayal” of her family and heritage—as she is carried away by the excitement of Manchester high society, and into the arms of a footballer notorious for giving a Nazi salute on the field—Shylock alternates grief for his beloved wife with rage against his own daughter''s rejection of her Jewish upbringing. Culminating in a shocking twist on Shylock’s demand for the infamous pound of flesh, Jacobson’s insightful retelling examines contemporary, acutely relevant questions of Jewish identity while maintaining a poignant sympathy for its characters and a genuine spiritual kinship with its antecedent—a drama which Jacobson himself considers to be “the most troubling of Shakespeare’s plays for anyone, but, for an English novelist who happens to be Jewish, also the most challenging.”

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.

An investigation of the origins of comedy and the meaning of laughter, drawing on biology, anthropology, classical studies, behavioural science, philosophy and psychology - with a few authorial jokes along the way.

From the beginning Oliver Walzer is a natural--at ping-pong. Even with his improvised bat (the Collins Classic edition of Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde) he can chop, flick, half-volley like a champion. At sex he is not a natural, being shy and frightened of women, but with tuition from Sheeny Waxman, fellow member of the Akiva Social Club Table Tennis team, his game improves. And while the Akiva boys teach him everything he needs to know about ping-pong, his father, Joel Walzer, teaches him everything there is to know about "swag." Unabashedly autobiographical, this is an hilarious and heartbreaking story of one man''s coming of age in 1950''s Manchester.

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.

Een door zijn joodse afkomst gefrustreerde leraar Engels zet zich uit jaloezie af tegen collega''s en vrienden die het verder hebben gebracht dan hij

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?

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.

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.

This book offers a dramatically new translation of "Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum," a commentary that deals extensively with LAB''s place in ancient biblical exegesis, and an introduction that treats the major problems associated with LAB (e.g. date, original language, manuscript tradition, exegetical techniques).

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.

''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

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.