First published 2011
Julian Treslove has failed at everything. His BBC editing career crashed. His relationships with women fell apart. He disappointed his two sons as a father. One evening, an attacker mugs him on the street. Treslove believes the woman calls him a Jew during the assault. The accusation fills him with strange joy rather than anger. For the first time, he feels he belongs somewhere. He wants to embrace Jewish identity, but his two closest friends complicate this desire. Both men are Jewish, yet both wish they weren't. Treslove's sudden conversion creates tension in their long friendship. The three men navigate questions of identity, belonging, and what it means to be Jewish in contemporary Britain. Their conversations reveal the contradictions of modern Jewish experience. Jacobson weaves together themes of male friendship, romantic failure, and religious identity. The novel examines how people search for meaning after personal collapse.
Genres: fiction, literary-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: conversion, personal-collapse, search-for-meaning
Setting: Britain
Period: Contemporary
448 pages · Hardcover · Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag