A tragicomic portrait of one man''s unravelling in an absurd, twisted world, Howl is the propulsive new novel from Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson. ''The undisputed British master of black comedies'' Observer In the aftermath of October 7, Ferdinand Draxler walks the streets of London in despair. Everything has changed - the sights, the sound, the spirit. He too is not who he was. Is he at the crossroads of history or is it just a bend in the cul-de-sac of his own gloomy nature? The son of a Holocaust survivor who accuses him of cowardice and the father of a daughter who sees him as complicit in genocide, Draxler fixates on bad news. He shouts at the television. He carries his own tin of paint to cover up graffiti. The staffroom at the primary school of which he is headmaster has become a battlefield of inflamed opinion he does nothing to quiet. His wife Charmian is a beacon of calm but even she isn''t sure she can save Ferdie from himself. ''Don''t worry about me,'' he tells her. ''I don''t have what it takes to go mad.'' ''Jacobson''s writing is virtuoso. He is the master of shifting tones, from the satirical to the serious. His prose has the sort of elastic precision you only get from a writer who is truly in command'' Independent

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Howard Jacobson has written eighteen novels and six works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question; he was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for J.

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**A tragicomic portrait of one man's unravelling in an absurd, twisted world, Howl is the propulsive new novel from Booker-Prize winner Howard Jacobson.

'A howling comic masterpiece' Patrick Marber

'Boils with fury and fizzes with life' Jonathan Freedland**

In the aftermath of October 7, Ferdinand Draxler walks the streets of London in despair. Everything has changed - the sights, the sound, the spirit. He too is not who he was. Is he at the crossroads of history or is it just a bend in the cul-de-sac of his own gloomy nature?

The son of a Holocaust survivor who accuses him of cowardice and the father of a daughter who sees him as complicit in genocide, Draxler fixates on bad news. He shouts at the television. He carries his own tin of paint to cover up graffiti. The staffroom at the primary school of which he is headmaster has become a battlefield of inflamed opinion he does nothing to quiet.

His wife Charmian is a beacon of calm but even she isn't sure she can save Ferdie from himself. 'Don't worry about me,' he tells her. 'I don't have what it takes to go mad.'

'He just gets better and better' Giles Coren