The Dog's Last Walk: (and Other Pieces)

Description

'The author's prose is always a delight ... a book that manages the high-wire act of being genuinely funny while dispensing genuine wisdom' Times Literary Supplement Week after week, for eighteen years, the Booker Prize-winning novelist Howard Jacobson wrote a weekly column for the Independent, reflecting in inimitable style on the sacred and the profane in turn, the frivolous and the serious, the deeply personal and the most universal. The shame and humiliation inherent in death is explored with frank astuteness. Matisse, darts and the power of love are celebrated; while cyclists are very much censured. And meanwhile, a beloved old Labrador walks his last walk as life elsewhere hurtles on and away... The Dog's Last Walk is a collection of wisdom and iconoclasm for our uncertain times, and one that reveals one of our greatest writers in all his humanity.

An award-winning writer and broadcaster, Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester, brought up in Prestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Kalooki Nights (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize) the highly acclaimed The Act of Love and the 2010 Man Booker Prize-winning The Finkler Question. Howard Jacobson lives in London.

Jacobson is one of the great sentence-builders of our time. I feel I have to raise my game, even just to praise ... In short, he is one of the great guardians of language and culture - all of it. Long may he flourish -- Nicholas Lezard * Guardian * [An] acutely observed collection of occasional pieces that pick at absurdist life and reveal him to be a quiz, a cultural critic gifted with precise comic timing * The Times * Yes, Jacobson is an entertainer ... And he does indeed entertain, but in a way that stimulates rather than simply amuses * Sunday Telegraph * Sharp and playful, surreal and thoughtful, and occasionally...rather moving * New Statesman * His columns were always one of the best things in [the Independent] - funny, argumentative, contrary and stuffed with ideas as well as a big, sympathetic personality. They were on the right side of the argument, even when they were obviously wrong ... He is an excellent writer to disagree with - and an even better one to agree with ... Jacobson was satisfying because he always gave the impression of writing to start a discussion at least, an argument on a good day, even a proper fight -- Philip Hensher * Spectator * Whether [Jacobson] is writing about the intricacies of darts, or why all TV programmes should be subtitled, or about a much loved old dog, he's invariably sharp, clever and very, very witty -- Simon Shaw * Mail on Sunday *