J

J

Kevern doesnt know why his father made him put two finger across his lips whenever he began a word with a J. It wasnt then, and isnt now, the time or place for asking questions. Ailinn, too, has grown up in the dark about who she is and where she comes from. The past is a dangerous country, not to be visited or talked about. She is new to the village; Kevern has lived here, in half-hiding, all his life. They feel a surge of protectiveness for each other the moment they meet. On their first date, Kevern kisses the bruises under her eyes. He doesnt ask who did it. Brutality has grown commonplace. They arent sure whether they have fallen in love of their own accord or whether theyve been pushed into each others arms. But who would have pushed them, and why? Nothing in this extraordinary new novel by Howard Jacobson is certain. Time lurches, what passes for memory might not have happened, accidents might not after all be accidental, history itself has been disowned. If this is the consequence of removing your enemies (and disturbing the necessary equilibrium of hate), could it be time to reinvent them? Into these sinister calculations first Ailinn and then Kevern are drawn Review J is a snarling, effervescent and ambitious philosophical work of fiction that poses unsettling questions about our sense of history, and our self-satisfied orthodoxies. Jacobson's triumph is to craft a novel that is poignant as well as troubling from the debris. -The IndependentA vaulting departure from Jacobsons usual contemporary comedies, it is an eerie, melancholy satire set in a distant Orwellian future. A provocative dystopian fantasy to stack next to Kazuo Ishiguros Never Let Me Go, J has the kind of nightmarish twist which makes you want to turn back to page one immediately and read the whole thing again. - The Daily ExpressThe dystopian British novel of our times. - The Guardian About the Author Howard Jacobson lives in London and is the author of eight previous novels and four works of non-fiction. He won the Everyman Wodehouse Award for comic writing in 1999 forThe Mighty Walzer.