Justly Forgotten or Unjustly Overlooked? Reconsidering Howard Jacobson’s Coming from Behind
Keywords:
British Jewish literature, Howard Jacobson, Coming from Behind, campus novel, comic novelAbstract
Howard Jacobson is a British Jewish writer, journalist and former professor of English literature who has authored sixteen novels, starting with his 1983 comic campus novel Coming from Behind, as well as six works of non-fiction. In all his works, Jacobson communicates insights into a variety of cultural as well as social topics, often motivated by his own experience. While Jacobson received more credit as a writer after being awarded the Booker Prize for his eleventh novel The Finkler Question in 2010, this recognition does not seem to have initiated a significant interest in his early writing. This paper thus aims to re-evaluate Jacobson’s first novel by contextualizing it within the author’s oeuvre as well as in the tradition of the British campus novel. Devoting close attention to the portrayal of British Jewish identity, intertextuality, and the use of comic and satirical elements, this article seeks to answer the question to what degree Jacobson’s debut novel laid foundations for his later fiction.
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