The Penguin Podcast is back! Listen Now
The Mighty Walzer

The Mighty Walzer

Summary

From the beginning Oliver Walzer is a natural - at ping-pong. Even with his improvised bat (the Collins Classic edition of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde) he can chop, flick, half-volley like a champion. At sex he is not so adept, but with tuition from Sheeny Waxman, fellow member of the Akiva Social Club Table Tennis Team and stalwart of the Kardomah coffee bar, his game improves.

Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize.

Reviews

  • Jacobson is a great storyteller: phrases, anecdotes and atmosphere roll off the page with the ease and sublime, scary grace of drunken eels...he is unsurpassable
    The Times

About the author

Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson has written seventeen 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.
Learn More

Sign up to the Penguin Newsletter

For the latest books, recommendations, author interviews and more