
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


James Naughtie and readers talk to this year's Man Booker prize winner - Howard Jacobson. The chosen book for this edition of Bookclub is the one he says he wants people to read : The Mighty Walzer, first published in 1999.
Peculiarly, it is a comic novel about the joy and despair of table tennis.
It's also a portrait of a Jewish boyhood in Manchester, showing how the main character - Oliver Walzer - comes to terms with the demands of puberty and his sporting genius; as well as the attentions of his mother, grandmother and assorted aunties.
Back in the 1950s Jacobson, like his alter-ego Oliver Walzer, was one of the top 10 junior table tennis players in the country. This is a heavily autobiographical novel from a writer who's has been called 'the master of confessional humour'.
As always on Bookclub, a group of readers join the author in the discussion and James Naughtie chairs the programme.
February's Bookclub choice : 'Blood River' by Tim Butcher.
Producer : Dymphna Flynn.
By BBC Radio 44.4
232232 ratings
James Naughtie and readers talk to this year's Man Booker prize winner - Howard Jacobson. The chosen book for this edition of Bookclub is the one he says he wants people to read : The Mighty Walzer, first published in 1999.
Peculiarly, it is a comic novel about the joy and despair of table tennis.
It's also a portrait of a Jewish boyhood in Manchester, showing how the main character - Oliver Walzer - comes to terms with the demands of puberty and his sporting genius; as well as the attentions of his mother, grandmother and assorted aunties.
Back in the 1950s Jacobson, like his alter-ego Oliver Walzer, was one of the top 10 junior table tennis players in the country. This is a heavily autobiographical novel from a writer who's has been called 'the master of confessional humour'.
As always on Bookclub, a group of readers join the author in the discussion and James Naughtie chairs the programme.
February's Bookclub choice : 'Blood River' by Tim Butcher.
Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

7,913 Listeners

143 Listeners

314 Listeners

1,067 Listeners

5,576 Listeners

1,808 Listeners

1,910 Listeners

303 Listeners

1,729 Listeners

1,018 Listeners

1,952 Listeners

370 Listeners

488 Listeners

585 Listeners

134 Listeners

129 Listeners

181 Listeners

136 Listeners

43 Listeners

3,245 Listeners

1,010 Listeners

100 Listeners

9 Listeners

6 Listeners

44 Listeners