New Releases by Howard Jacobson

Karl Leon Forelock is a product of the northern English town of Partington and a graduate with a double starred first in the Moral Decencies. Sent to Sydney on a CIA bursary on a mission to teach the Australians how to live, Leon quickly discovers that there are some natives who believe that they have an education to pass on in return.

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.

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).

When fast-breaking political events forced British novelist Jacobson (Peeping Tom) to put off a trip to Lithuania planned as a search for his Jewish roots, he accepted an offer from the BBC to visit Jewish communities around the globe instead. This informed and witty account of his experiences deals with the wide variety of contemporary Jewish life, as well as with how Jacobson''s observations affected his own concept of what it means to be a Jew. Riding an emotional roller coaster, he witnessed the hostility between Jews and African Americans in New York City, attended services in a gay synagogue in California and found his basic cynicism about religion reinforced after he spent time with Orthodox Jews in Israel, although his spirits were lifted by a visit to an idealistic, tolerant Israeli kibbutz. His journey concluded with the postponed trip to Lithuania, where the author found virulent anti-Semitism.

The fall of man from Cain''s point of view. He calls God a spiteful tyrant and has nasty things to say about such biblical personages as Abel, Adam and Eve, and his girlfriend, Zilpah. By the author of Coming from Behind.

Barney Fugleman has two major preoccupations in life: sex and literature. He is obsessed by the life and work of a man hailed by many as a genius of the nineteenth century - and by Barney as a ''prurient little Victorian ratbag''.

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