From the author of The Mighty Walzer, winner of the Everyman Wodehouse Award, for comic writing. Marvin Kreitman, the luggage baron of South London, lives for women. At present he loves four – his mother, his wife Hazel, and his two daughters – and is in love with five more. Charlie Merriweather, on the other hand, loves just the one woman, his wife of twenty years. Once a week the two friends meet for a Chinese lunch in Soho, contriving never quite to have the conversation they would like to have. Until today, that is. What follows shows Howard Jacobson in majestic form – unnervingly truthful, poignant, and very, very funny.
Author
Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester, England, and educated at Cambridge. His many novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Who’s Sorry Now? and Kalooki Nights (both longlisted for the Man Booker Prize), and, most recently, The Act of Love. Jacobson is also a respected critic and broadcaster, and writes a weekly column for the Independent. He lives in London. Profile of Howard Jacobson in The New York Times. “The book's appeal to Jewish readers is obvious, but like all great Jewish art—the paintings of Marc Chagall, the books of Saul Bellow, the films of Woody Allen—it is Jacobson's use of the Jewish experience to explain the greater human one that sets it apart. Who among us is so certain of our identity? Who hasn't been asked, "What's your background" and hesitated, even for a split second, to answer their inquisitor? Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question forces us to ask that of ourselves, and that's why it's a must read, no matter what your background.”—-David Sax, NPR.
