A tragicomic portrait of one man’s unravelling in an absurd, twisted world, Howl<\/i> is the propulsive new novel from Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson.<\/p>\n
‘A howling comic masterpiece’ Patrick Marber<\/p>\n
‘Boils with fury and fizzes with life’ Jonathan Freedland<\/b><\/p>\n
In the aftermath of October 7, Ferdinand Draxler walks the streets of London in despair. Everything has changed – the sights, the sound, the spirit. He too is not who he was. Is he at the crossroads of history or is it just a bend in the cul-de-sac of his own gloomy nature?<\/p>\n
The son of a Holocaust survivor who accuses him of cowardice and the father of a daughter who sees him as complicit in genocide, Draxler fixates on bad news. He shouts at the television. He carries his own tin of paint to cover up graffiti. The staffroom at the primary school of which he is headmaster has become a battlefield of inflamed opinion he does nothing to quiet.<\/p>\n
His wife Charmian is a beacon of calm but even she isn’t sure she can save Ferdie from himself. ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he tells her. ‘I don’t have what it takes to go mad.’<\/p>\n
‘He just gets better and better’ Giles Coren<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the aftermath of a massacre from which he doubts the world will ever recover, Ferdinand Draxler finds himself at the crossroads of history. Unless it’s just a bend in the cul-de-sac of his own gloomy nature. The son of a Holocaust survivor who accuses him of cowardice and the father of a daughter who accuses him of genocide, Draxler longs to be a hero for his people or the comic scourge of their enemies, but does he have the mettle to be either? He isn’t even sure he has what it takes to go mad. He wades through protests and searches London for menacing graffiti, whilst dodging the warring staff in the primary school where he is headmaster and the pleas of his non-Jewish wife to seek ‘mental health’ support. But can’t she see that the world is crumbling around them, and he is at the centre?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[216],"product_tag":[26830,26843,27011,26898],"class_list":{"0":"post-113323","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","5":"product_cat-fiction-hardback","6":"product_tag-modern-contemporary-fiction","7":"product_tag-narrative-theme-interior-life","8":"product_tag-narrative-theme-politics","9":"product_tag-narrative-theme-social-issues","10":"pa_book_author-jacobson-howard","11":"pa_cover-hardback","12":"pa_dewey-823-92-edition23","13":"pa_edition-hardback-original","14":"pa_imprint-jonathan-cape","15":"pa_language-english","16":"pa_pages-8341","17":"pa_publisher-jonathan-cape","18":"pa_readership-general-trade-code-k","20":"first","21":"instock","22":"sale","23":"taxable","24":"shipping-taxable","25":"purchasable","26":"product-type-simple"},"yoast_head":"\n