Showing results by author "Howard Jacobson"

In this Audible Exclusive performance by Matt Lucas of Great Expectations, Charles Dickens demonstrates that conscience, loyalty and empathy are virtues far more valuable than intellect, wealth and social standing. First published in Dickens’ own periodical, All the Year Round, the novel was divided into nine monthly instalments, from December 1860 to August 1861. Unsurprisingly, it was an instant success and managed to sell over 100,000 copies per week. Though written at a challenging time in Dickens’ life, when the impending breakdown of his marriage loomed over him, Great Expectations proves to be one of his most optimistic, comical and romantic novels.

In The China Study, T. Colin 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.

Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler 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. Now all three are recently widowed, in their own way, and spend sweetly painful evenings together reminiscing. Until an unexpected violent attack brings everything they thought they knew into question.

'Who is this guy, Dad? What is he doing here?' With an absent wife and a daughter going off the rails, wealthy art collector and philanthropist Simon Strulovitch is in need of someone to talk to. So when he meets Shylock at a cemetery in Cheshire's Golden Triangle, he invites him back to his house. It's the beginning of a remarkable friendship.

One day, out of the blue, Henry Nagel receives a solicitor's letter telling him he has inherited a sumptuous apartment in St John's Wood. Divine intervention? Or his late father's love nest? Henry doesn't know, but he's glad to escape the North, where there is nothing and no one to keep him. After nearly 60 years of angry disappointment, Henry's life is about to change. But the ghosts of Henry's past are not prepared to disappear without a struggle....

Hilarious, heart-breaking, provocative and affecting, Howard Jacobson's irresistible journalism reveals the Man Booker Prize-winning novelist in all his humanity. From the tiniest absurdities to the most universal joys and desolations, Jacobson writes with a thunder, passion and wit unmatched. Just as did his previous volume, Whatever It Is I Don't Like It, this glorious collection will delight, entertain, challenge and move.

Two people fall in love. Kevern doesn't know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a world starting with a J. Ailinn too has grown up in the dark about where she came from. On their first date Kevern kisses the bruises under her eyes. He doesn't ask who hurt her. Hanging over the lives of everyone is a past event shrouded in suspicion, now referred to as What Happened, If It Happened.

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. He has no manners, no curiosity, no knowledge, no idea and no words with which to express them. Could he, in that case, be the very leader to make the country great again?

Experience teaches that the burden of guilt is as difficult as the burden of obligation. Philosophers note that irritation with this burden can quickly turn to resentment. So should Jews therefore be careful not to present themselves as victims? Does the same law apply to anti-Semitism? Howard Jacobson wonders if this chain of animosity can ever be broken.

The Finkler Question is a scorching story of friendship and loss and of the wisdom and humanity of maturity. Funny, furious, unflinching, this extraordinary novel shows one of our finest writers at his brilliant best. Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler 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 hilarious and moving true story by Man Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson about the greatest “swag man” in the history of Manchester. A charming, brazen salesman of genius, Frankie Cohen rises from selling cheap gewgaws, known as swag, for Jacobson's father in the rough market streets of the Northern English city, to buying and selling some of the world's greatest artworks.