Editions

Pussy

Pussy

A provocatively entertaining, savagely funny satire on Donald Trump by Britain’s greatest comic novelist.

Pussy is the story of Prince Fracassus, heir presumptive to the Duchy of Origen, famed for its golden-gated skyscrapers and casinos, who passes his boyhood watching reality shows on TV, imagining himself to be the Roman Emperor Nero, and fantasizing about hookers. He is idle, boastful, thin-skinned and egotistic; has no manners, no curiosity, no knowledge, no idea and no words in which to express them. Could he, in that case, be the very leader to make the country great again?

Reviews

  • A satire in Swiftian vein, this is Howard Jacobson’s fifteenth novel and first hand grenade. If Trump’s policy is to move fast and break things, then he has a competitor in Jacobson, who began Pussyv in the aftermath of Trump’s election victory and completed well before Trump’s catastrophic failure to repeal Obamacare… It has all the qualities of a fleet response: undigested rage, whip-smart wit devastating fluency and an aim as straight as an arrow… This is the story, savagely well told by our greatest comic novelist, of how we got in the state we’re in.

    Francis Wilson, Oldie

  • The pairing of author and subject sounds divinely ordained: The world’s smartest comic novelist vs. a TV reality star who ran for president while bragging about his genitals.

    Ron Charles, Washington Post

  • There are many aesthetic pleasures to be had in Pussy. If Trump’s presidency is a source of continuing anxiety, then among its very few benefits is that it has moved one of our finest comic writers to write an elegantly savage satire of a man who defies satire.

    Andrew Anthony, Observer

  • Jacobson is… on target and deliciously laugh-aloud nasty about not just the making of this rough beast but what in the American character enabled it to go slouching into the White House.

    Jeffrey Burke, Mail on Sunday

  • This is top-class comment writing, disguised in the form of a satirical jeu d’esprit… It is, to quote the title of Jacobson’s own study of comedy, Seriously Funny.

    Philip Collins, The Times

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About the Author

Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson has written sixteen novels and five 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.

Howard Jacobson

Related articles

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Features

Howard Jacobson on Trump, satire and why he wrote Pussy

'I wrote Pussy thinking only of how vexed I would be if I didn't write it'. Man Booker prize winner Howard Jacobson on the 'rush of passion' that drove him to pen his Trump-inspired novella.
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Podcasts

Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson joins Richard E. Grant in the Penguin studio to talk about his new novel Shylock Is My Name, a retelling of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
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Podcasts

Hogarth Shakespeare with Jeanette Winterson and Howard Jacobson

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