Howard Jacobson - Unholy Conversations

About this episode

Howard Jacobson discusses his novel 'Howl' and the themes of anger and identity in the context of recent events.

Howard Jacobson has screamed "liar" at the BBC, lost friends over a newspaper article, and started asking his wife whether it's still safe to live in London. Now he's written a novel about all of it. *Howl* is the story of Ferdinand Draxler — Jewish headmaster, reluctant marcher, man on the edge — who watches the world he believed in applaud the October 7th massacre and descends into a rage that may or may not be madness. Jacobson says he borrowed quite a lot from the last two years of his life. In this Unholy Conversations episode, Jacobson talks with Yonit and Jonathan about the ungovernable anger behind the novel, why he chose comedy as the only honest vehicle for it, the friends who wrote accusing him of celebrating Palestinian deaths, the Manchester synagogue where he was bar mitzvahed and which was attacked on Yom Kippur, and the question he can't shake: what would we have done in Berlin in 1932?

People in this episode

Hosts: Yonit, Jonathan

Guest: Howard Jacobson

Topics covered

• anger
• comedy
• Jewish identity
• literature
• current events
• historical reflection

Keywords

• Howard Jacobson
• Howl
• anger
• comedy
• Jewish identity
• October 7th
• Yom Kippur
• literature

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Howl

Places: London, Manchester, Berlin

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