J

Shortlisted for the 2014 Man Booker Prize

Shortlisted for the 2014 Goldsmiths Prize

Set in the future – a world where the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited – J is a love story of incomparable strangeness, both tender and terrifying.

Howard Jacobson, one of Britains greatest novelists and winner of the 2010 Man Booker prize, has written a novel which ‘may well come to be seen as the dystopian British novel of its times’. (John Burnside, Guardian)

Two people fall in love, not yet knowing where they have come from or where they are going.

Kevern doesnt know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a word starting with a J. It wasnt then, and isnt now, the time or place to be asking questions.

Ailinn too has grown up in the dark about who she was or where she came from.

On their first date Kevern kisses the bruises under her eyes. He doesnt ask who hurt her. Brutality has grown commonplace.

They arent sure if 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?

Hanging over the lives of all the characters in this novel is a momentous catastrophe a past event shrouded in suspicion, denial and apology, now referred to as What Happened, If It Happened. J is a novel to be talked about in the same breath as Nineteen Eighty-Four and Brave New World, thought-provoking and life-changing. It is like no other novel that Howard Jacobson has written.