TheDog's Last Walk

Howard Jacobson's career has spanned decades and garnered many awards including the Man Booker Award 2010 for The Finkler Question. He is frequently hailed as one of the greatest writers working todayAn 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.'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.'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 SupplementJacobson 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[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 timingYes, Jacobson is an entertainer ... And he does indeed entertain, but in a way that stimulates rather than simply amusesSharp and playful, surreal and thoughtful, and occasionally.rather movingHis 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 fightWhether [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