Books by Howard Jacobson
Zoo Time
by Howard Jacobson
🏆 Winner of the 2013 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
This satirical follow-up to Jacobson's Booker Prize-winning The Finkler Question introduces the writer Guy Ableman, "a man ruled by pointless ambition and a blazing red penis." His twin preoccupations with his temptingly attractive mother-in-law and the decline of modern literary culture drives this rambunctiously clever meta-comedy.
“This is a very funny book about middle-aged men fighting with each other and fighting to maintain their self-esteem in pathetic ways. It’s very accessible. Sam Finkler, a popular thinker, media personality, and bestselling author, and his friend Julian Treslove reconvene with their former professor, an older Jewish immigrant from the Czech Republic. The book is about how Jews are expected to cooperate with contemporary anti-Semitism. To be accepted, Finkler renounces and demonizes the state of Israel. This book came out in 2010; only in more recent years has the UK started to grapple with the open anti-Semitism in its society.” Read more...
Dara Horn, Novelist
The Mighty Walzer
by Howard Jacobson
🏆 Winner of the 2000 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
“The Mighty Walzer is certainly one of his best. It’s a novel about table tennis in the 1950s and is very autobiographical. What I love so much about it is that Jacobson has an eye for the folly of the sport but also for its grandeur. He has an ability to articulate the psychology of sport even at an amateur level. Even when it is being played at the local Allied Jam and Marmalade factory on a table in the basement where the ball keeps going behind stacked-up chairs or falling behind the stage. It was very evocative of my learning to play table tennis, and Jacobson has a rare genius for encapsulating the sociology of the thing.” Read more...
Matthew Syed, Journalist
Interviews where books by Howard Jacobson were recommended
The Funniest Books of the 21st Century
This year, to mark its 25th anniversary, the Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction declared Marina Lewycka's A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian to be their 'winner of winners', that is: the funniest book of the last twenty-five years. We asked comedian Tatty Macleod, one of the judges, about the process of sifting through their longlist of the previous winners.
The best books on Champions, recommended by Matthew Syed
Table tennis champion and author of Bounce: How Champions are Made, Matthew Syed believes that winning is partly the placebo effect of confidence.
Booker Prize-Winning Novels
The winner of the 2024 Booker Prize was Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, the first novel to win the prize that’s set in space. Below, our list of all the Booker Prize-winning novels of the last twenty years.
The Best Books for Hanukkah, recommended by Dara Horn
Hanukkah means ‘a dedication’ and the celebration of the Jewish holiday towards the end of every year commemorates the success of the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid Empire and the re-consecration of the Temple of Jerusalem in the second century BCE. Here, award-winning novelist Dara Horn recommends books that speak to the powerful themes of Hanukkah and explains why Jewish people are encouraged to light menorahs publicly around the world.
The best books on Jewish Humour, recommended by Ruth Wisse
Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature Emerita at Harvard and author of No Joke: Making Jewish Humour, identifies Tevye the Dairyman as the first standup comic and Sigmund Freud as Jewish humour’s greatest analyst.
