Howard Jacobson

Finkler Question

T. Colin Campbell

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.

Rethinking the Science of Nutrition

Whole

WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality, are old school friends. Despite very different lives, they've never quite lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevcik. Both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed, and together with Treslove they share a sweetly painful evening revisiting a time before they had loved and lost. It is that very evening, when Treslove hesitates a moment as he walks home, that he is attacked - and his whole sense of who and what he is slowly and ineluctably changes.

The Finkler Question

Paul Sussman

Gordon Griffin

Making of Henry

Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize. Karl Leon Forelock is a product of the northern English town of Partington (the wettest spot in Europe) and a graduate with a double starred first in the Moral Decencies from Malapert college, Cambridge. 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. But it is at the hands of the women in Australia that Leon receives his most painful, and on occasions his most pleasurable, lessons. Meanwhile, in a foul, dilapidated bush privy, way up in the Bogong high plains, the Redback sucks her teeth and waits her turn...

Redback

Heller, Joseph

'Never Has a Book Been Laughed and Wept Over So Many Times'

Catch-22

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 womanising, 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.

Who's Sorry Now

The Collected Papers of Howard Jacobson

From Babel to Finnegans Wake

'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 Writer's Beginnings

Mother's Boy

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. Now they're fighting, locked in oral combat. He won't shut up, and she's putting her finger down her throat again. So there's only one thing to do: 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 conventional sex, so long as it's immoderate-he's never been choosy. But what happens when sex is all you know and yet no longer what you want? Praise from the UK for No More Mr. Nice Guy: "Brilliant and funny...No More Mr. Nice Guy shows invention on every page, every paragraph. Jacobson is unique."-Evening Standard "A very funny, very intelligent novel...How many of [Jacobson's] contemporaries have described the male condition with such wry, unsparing honesty?"-Sunday Telegraph

A Novel

No More Mr. Nice Guy

Guy Ableman é um romancista apaixonado pela mulher, Vanessa, uma ruiva deslumbrante, contraditória e assustadoramente estressada. O problema é que ele não está menos fascinado por sua sedutora sogra, Poppy. A presença das duas destrói a paz de espírito de Guy, fazendo-o imaginar histórias e impedindo-o de se concentrar tempo suficiente para escrevê-las. Não que alguém leia seus livros. Ou qualquer outra coisa. A leitura, Guy teme, acabou. Seu editor, consciente disso, suicidou-se. Seu agente anda sumido. Vanessa, por outro lado, está escrevendo o próprio romance. Guy não espera que ela termine, mas se apavora quando pensa que pode estar errado. A ficção pode estar morta, mas o desejo, não. A partir desse desejo, ele acredita que pode escrever um ótimo livro.

O grande zoológico

Guy Ableman, écrivain de son état, est fou de sa femme Vanessa, une rousse éblouissante, perpétuellement en colère. L’ennui c’est que, depuis le premier jour, il est aussi fou de la non moins séduisante mère de Vanessa, Poppy. Pareilles à des soeurs plutôt qu’à une mère et sa fille, elles forment un tandem volcanique : si elles lui inspirent les scènes les plus farfelues, elles le perturbent au point qu’il ne peut plus produire une ligne. Non que Guy fût très lu ces jours-ci. Non que quiconque lise quoi que ce soit non plus. D’ailleurs, Guy en est convaincu, la lecture, c’est fini. La littérature aussi. Son éditeur est du même avis, il s’est suicidé. Son agent ? Aux abonnés absents. Entre-temps Vanessa a décidé d’écrire. Guy ne s’attend pas à ce qu’elle termine son oeuvre, ni même qu’elle la commence, mais il en perd le sommeil. Peut-être est-il l’heure pour lui de révéler sa flamme à Poppy ? Si le roman est mort, le désir existe toujours ! Et il se pourrait bien que ce désir lui permette d’accoucher d’un grand bouquin. Tour à tour furieux, élégiaque et impertinent, La Grande Ménagerie est un roman d’amour : une ode aux femmes, à la littérature et à l’humour. .

La Grande ménagerie

From the very beginning, Oliver Walzer is a natural - at ping-pong. Without even a bat, he can chop, flick, half-volley like a champion. This is a story of one man's coming of age in the Manchester of the 1950s.

The Mighty Walzer

Two people fall in love in a world where the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited. As they discover where they came from and where they are going, a bigger, more shattering truth is revealed to them. Kevern doesn't know why his father made him put two fingers 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 was and where she came from. On their first date Kevern kisses the bruises under her eyes. He doesn't ask who hurt her. 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?

Το βιβλίο εντάσσεται στη σειρά Hogarth Shakespeare Project: τα πιο αγαπημένα έργα του μεγαλύτερου δραματουργού όλων των εποχών ξαναγράφονται από τους σπουδαιότερους σύγχρονους συγγραφείς. O Howard Jacobson ξαναγράφει τον Έμπορο της Βενετίας. Η γυναίκα του χαμένη. Η κόρη του εκτός ελέγχου. Ο έμπορος τέχνης Σάιμον Στρούλοβιτς χρειάζεται επειγόντως έναν άνθρωπο για να μιλήσει. Έτσι όταν συναντά τον Σάιλοκ σε ένα νεκροταφείο, δεν διστάζει να τον προσκαλέσει στο σπίτι του. Αυτή θα είναι η αρχή μιας ασυνήθιστης φιλίας… Ο Στρούλοβιτς προσπαθεί να συμφιλιωθεί με το γεγονός ότι η κόρη του πρόδωσε την οικογένεια και την καταγωγή της, καθώς παρασυρμένη από τον ενθουσιασμό της υψηλής κοινωνίας του Μάντσεστερ έπεσε στην αγκαλιά ενός διαβόητου ποδοσφαιριστή, ο οποίος έχει χαιρετήσει ναζιστικά στο γήπεδο. Ο Σάιλοκ εναλλάσσει το πένθος του για τη σύζυγό του με την οργή του για το γεγονός ότι και η δική του κόρη απορρίπτει την εβραϊκή της ανατροφή. Μια προκλητική και διεισδυτική ερμηνεία του Εμπόρου της Βενετίας, γραμμένη με τη χαρακτηριστική ειρωνεία του Jacobson, με πρωταγωνιστή έναν Σάιλοκ που διαθέτει διεισδυτικό πνεύμα, πάθος και έντονους προβληματισμούς για θέματα ταυτότητας, πατρότητας, αντισημιτισμού και εκδίκησης.

Το όνομά μου είναι Σάιλοκ

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.

Julian Treslove et Sam Finkler se connaissent depuis l’enfance, Libor Sevcik est leur ancien prof d’histoire. Au fil des ans, la vie les a séparés sans qu’ils se perdent tout à fait de vue. La mort des épouses de Finkler et de Libor va les réunir de nouveau ; Treslove, veuf honoraire, passe quelques heures délicieusement pénibles avec ses deux amis, à se rappeler le passé. Or, ce soir-là, en rentrant chez lui le cœur lourd, il est victime d’une banale agression qu’il passera des jours à décortiquer. Peu à peu, une certitude s’impose à lui : on l’a pris pour un juif. Et s’il l’était vraiment ? "Chaque page déborde d'esprit : humour noir ou doux-amer, ironie, comédie, burlesque, rparties, cynisme... L'humour n'est pas l'ennemi d'un propos sérieux, et, entre de bonnes mains, il est même vital, en ce qu'il inroduit habilement des idées, des postulats, des partis pris et des préjugés inconscients" The London Times

La Question finkler

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.

The Exagoge of Ezekiel

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).

With Latin Text and English Translation

A Commentary on Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum

'A wonderful memoir, written with great linguistic brio. Candid, shrewd and moving - a classic of its kind.' - William Boyd 'Laugh-out-loud glorious and uproarious of course - but don't let the self-ribbing fool you; this is deep and poignant.' Simon Schama Howard Jacobson's funny, revealing and tender memoir of his path to becoming a writer It's my theory that only the unhappy, the uncomfortable, the gauche, the badly put together, aspire to make art. Why would you seek to reshape the world unless you were ill-at-ease in it? And I came out of the womb in every sense the wrong way round. In Mother's Boy, Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson reveals how he became a writer. It is an exploration of belonging and not-belonging, of being an insider and outsider, both English and Jewish. Jacobson was forty when his first novel was published. In Mother's Boy he traces the life that brought him there. Born to a working-class family in 1940s Manchester, the great-grandson of Lithuanian and Russian immigrants, Jacobson was raised by his mother, grandmother and aunt Joyce. His father was a regimental tailor, as well as an upholsterer, a market-stall holder, a taxi driver, a balloonist, and a magician. Grappling always with his family's history and his Jewish identity, Jacobson takes us from the growing pains of childhood to studying at Cambridge under F.R. Leavis, and landing in Sydney as a maverick young professor on campus. After his first marriage and the birth of his son, he lived in places as disparate as London, Wolverhampton, Boscastle and Melbourne, and worked many different jobs to make ends meet, from selling handbags on a market stall, to teaching English in schools, universities and sometimes football stadiums, and even helping to run an Australian-inspired restaurant in the middle of Cornwall. Full of Jacobson's trademark humour and infused with bittersweet memories of his parents, this is the story of a writer's beginnings - as well as the twists and turns that life takes - and of learning to understand who you are before you can become the writer you were meant to be.

Howard Jacobson

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