“Whether I’m writing about Jews or not, the fact that I’m Jewish determines the nature of the way that I write.”
“We are alarmed that during the past few years, constructive criticism of Israeli governments has morphed into something closer to antisemitism.”
“Why am I watching this man?” Jacobson wondered while watching Trump. “There is nothing here. It’s the power of nothing.”
Howard Jacobson’s new novel “Shylock Is My Name” updates “The Merchant of Venice” to the contemporary suburbs of Manchester. The book raises a slew of thought-provoking questions: Among them:
At first glance, the question of whether Jews will ever be forgiven for the Holocaust may seem absurd. But author Howard Jacobson is serious — and says the answer is no.
Howard Jacobson’s first book after winning the Man Booker Prize is an equal opportunity excoriation of pretty much everyone and everything in the publishing business.
In this, the second annual Forward Fives selection, we celebrate the year’s cultural output with a series of deliberately eclectic choices in film, music, theater, exhibitions and books. Here we present five of the most important Jewish novels of 2010. Feel free to argue with and add to our selections in the comments.
This year’s Man Booker Prize shortlist featured two authors who write about groups not often represented in British literature. Howard Jacobson, author of “The Finkler Question,” has made a career crafting a literary image of the English Jew, while Andrea Levy, shortlisted for “The Long Song,” has documented the black British experience in her five novels, most recently focusing on colonial slaves in nineteenth-century Jamaica. While Jacobson ultimately took the prize, “The Long Song” thrust its author back into the spotlight — in October, Levy was a guest at the Vancouver International Writers Festival and Toronto’s International Festival of Authors.
*Crossposted From Under the Fig Tree