Product Description

Finalist for the 2014 Man Booker Prize

is a snarling, effervescent, and ambitious philosophical work of fiction that poses unsettling questions about our sense of history, and our self-satisfied orthodoxies. Jacobsons triumph is to craft a novel that is poignant as well as troubling from the debris. (UK)

Man Booker Prizewinner Howard Jacobsons brilliant and profound new novel, , invites comparison with George Orwells and Aldous Huxleys (, London). Set in a world where collective memory has vanished and the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or visited, is a boldly inventive love story, both tender and terrifying.

Kevern Cohen 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. When the extravagantly beautiful Ailinn Solomons arrives in his village by a sea that laps no other shore, Kevern is instantly drawn to her. Although mistrustful by nature, the two become linked as if they were meant for each other. Together, they form a refuge from the commonplace brutality that is the legacy of a historic catastrophe shrouded in suspicion, denial, and apology, simply referred to as WHAT HAPPENED, IF IT HAPPENED. To Ailinns guardian, Esme Nussbaum, Ailinn and Kevern are fragile shoots of hopefulness. As this unusual pairs actions draw them into ever-increasing danger, Esme is determined to keep them togetherwhatever the cost.

In this stunning, evocative, and terribly heartbreaking work, where one couples love affair could have shattering consequences for the human race, Howard Jacobson gathers his prodigious gifts for the crowning achievement of a remarkable career.