Zoo Time

Zoo Time

A Novel

Howard Jacobson

Reading is over. Writing is finished. Publishing is dead. Embittered author Guy Ableman knows this, as does his desperate editor; as does the sad whole of doomed literary London. But Guy is dedicated to his dying art, and continues to write for an audience that doesn't exist, loathed by the few readers he does have - feminists who charge him with misogyny, mothers who accuse him of hating children.

His vivacious wife Vanessa, a strikingly beautiful red-head, contrary, highly strung and often blazingly angry, is another source of pain, as is her alluring mother Poppy. More like sisters than mother and daughter, they come as a pair, a blistering presence. And Guy is, from the off, as captivated by his mother-in-law as he is by his wife...

Against a backdrop of disappointment, failure and loss, in a world in which food and fashion have long since trampled fiction into the ground, Guy is consumed with the temptation of an illicit affair. It distorts every thought in his head, and becomes his next great novel. Fantasy blurs with reality in this furious, hilarious novel about love, loss, mothers and daughters. Frank, poignant and moving, Zoo Time is our funniest writer at his brilliant best.

“Outlandish, fueled by rage, very much like a brilliant comic stand-up routine…a comic novel of ideas.” —The New York Times Book Review
“How is it possible to read Howard Jacobson and not lose oneself in admiration for the music of his language, the power of his characterisation and the penetration of his insight?” —The Times
“On this form, Jacobson has better claims than anyone to be called the greatest novelist working in Britain today.” —Mail on Sunday
“Sentence by sentence, there are few writers who exhibit the same unawed respect for language or such a relentless commitment to re-examining even the most seemingly unobjectionable of received wisdoms.” —Daily Telegraph
“Jacobson is a master of stylish prose with a comic bent.” —Booklist
“Howard Jacobson's prose is hilarious…this literary novel about the death of the literary novel sounds comedy's depths of sorrow.” —Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Just because most of us don't fantasize continuously about ditching our wives for our mothers-in-law doesn't mean it's not an excellent premise for a novel. …entertaining—and biting—to the final twist.” —The Forward
“[A]wickedly funny satire of publishing…It is always a joy to read Jacobson's prose, whose beguilingly casual tone belies its meticulous construction. This newest work confirms yet again his singular ability to weave comedy, sex, ideas, and deep insight into irresistible storytelling.” —Jewish Book World

About the Author

Howard Jacobson (born 1942 in Manchester, England) is a British novelist, critic, and broadcaster known for comic fiction that explores Jewish identity and experience in contemporary Britain. Raised in the Manchester suburb of Prestwich, he studied English at Downing College, Cambridge, under the influential critic F. R. Leavis. After graduating, he lectured at the University of Sydney before returning to Britain, where he taught at Cambridge's Selwyn College and later at Wolverhampton Polytechnic — an experience that inspired his debut novel, Coming from Behind (1983).

Jacobson went on to write more than a dozen novels, including The Mighty Walzer (1999) and Zoo Time (2012), both winners of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing — a distinction no other author has achieved twice — as well as Kalooki Nights and Who's Sorry Now?, both longlisted for the Booker Prize. He won the Man Booker Prize outright in 2010 for The Finkler Question, a novel about male friendship, loss, and the meaning of Jewish identity, described by critics for its mastery of humor and its ability to inhabit the personal and moral worlds of its characters.

Often compared to Philip Roth, Jacobson has preferred to describe himself instead as "a Jewish Jane Austen." Alongside his fiction, he built a long career as a columnist and critic, and lives in London.

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