SOHO, London — Howard Jacobson’s big brown eyes are ringed with purple bruises, and he has a wrist brace on his right hand. He slipped off the curb the afternoon before we met. I’m not in much better shape: My right hand and wrist are bandaged after a bout of overexuberant gardening.

When Howard shuffles into the café down the street from his apartment in London, all leonine beard and bedraggled mane, our server greets him as a regular. She looks at his bruised face and then at my hand—and asks me if I did it.