A provocatively entertaining, savagely funny satire on Donald Trump by Britain's greatest comic novelist, winner of the Man Booker Prize
Howard Jacobson has written fifteen novels and five works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question and was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for his most recent novel, J.
A satire in Swiftian vein, this is Howard Jacobson's fifteenth
novel and first hand grenade. If Trump's policy is to move fast
and break things, then he has a competitor in Jacobson, who began
Pussyv in the aftermath of Trump's election victory and
completed well before Trump's catastrophic failure to repeal
Obamacare... It has all the qualities of a fleet response:
undigested rage, whip-smart wit devastating fluency and an aim as
straight as an arrow... This is the story, savagely well told
by our greatest comic novelist, of how we got in the state
we're in. -- Francis Wilson * Oldie *
The pairing of author and subject sounds divinely ordained: The
world's smartest comic novelist vs. a TV reality star who ran for
president while bragging about his genitals. -- Ron Charles *
Washington Post *
There are many aesthetic pleasures to be had in Pussy. If
Trump's presidency is a source of continuing anxiety, then among
its very few benefits is that it has moved one of our finest
comic writers to write an elegantly savage satire of a man who
defies satire. -- Andrew Anthony * Observer *
Jacobson is... on target and deliciously laugh-aloud nasty
about not just the making of this rough beast but what in the
American character enabled it to go slouching into the White House.
-- Jeffrey Burke * Mail on Sunday *
This is top-class comment writing, disguised in the form of a
satirical jeu d'esprit... It is, to quote the title of
Jacobson's own study of comedy, Seriously Funny. -- Philip Collins
* The Times *
Angry... In common with many a classic satire, Pussy
is written as a fable... It's all great fun... Jacobson is very
good on the nuances of the Trump phenomenon, both in terms of
what's alarming about it and why it has struck such a resonant
chord... And even if his book is unlikely to topple any
governments, it may at least, as its author hopes, spread comfort
in some quarter and vexation in others. -- Dan Brotzel * UK
Press Syndication *
The book brilliantly portrays a world in which language and the
complexity of ideas that it can convey has been devalued... The
novel hurtles breathlessly through a bildungsroman of the young
prince from "baby celebrity" to idling away his boyhood watching
reality TV shows, to becoming a young man fantasising about
prostitutes and being a Roman emperor, to the moment he runs for
election... Fascinating. -- Anita Sethi * i *
For anyone thinking that Pussy is a comic novel, beware: the
book is relentlessly unfunny. But this should not be taken as a
criticism; rather, recognition of just how creepily well
realized and bleak Jacobson's vision of the Trump phenomenon
turns out to be... It also captures, with chilling accuracy, the
way Trumpism is a reflection of the post-literate world we
increasingly inhabit... Bullseye, Mr Jacobson. This is a novel
that has much to say about how Mussolinis like Trump coerce others
into succumbing to their profoundly myopic, Manichaean world-view.
-- Douglas Kennedy * New Statesman *
Howard Jacobson's reaction to the recent US election is
viciously sharp, and almost too close to the bone to be
funny... After the result, Jacobson... churned out 50,000
lacerating words in the form of a fable, one filled to its
margins with viciously sharp humour and gossamer-thin allusions to
reality... While delirious in its excoriations, Pussy
can be hard to laugh at at times as it is so on-the-nose, in much
the same way many rock bands find This is Spinal Tap too
accurate to be outright comedy... A seething little nugget of a
book. -- Hilary A White * Irish Independent *
What immediately stands out is how different this is from most of
Jacobson's fiction. This is all-out political satire, a punchy
attack on President Trump... Fracassus is a Nero for our times.
Monstrous. Larger than life. Jacobson captures him with some
excellent turns of phrase. -- David Herman * Jewish Chronicle *
Pussy, written at huge speed, is a brilliant send-up of
President Trump and a departure from Jacobson's usual
contemporary fiction. Published this week, the deliciously
funny satire takes wry pot shots at the most powerful man in
the US and his inner circle and raises serious questions about
morality, identity and truth in today's increasingly strange
political world. -- Rebecca Wallersteiner * Jewish News *
Pussy... is an aberration for the writer oft-described as
Britain's greatest living comic novelist: a curious and
purposefully not that funny moral fable written at lightning speed
in "a fury of disbelief". -- Chitra Ramaswamy * Scotsman *
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