In the Land of Oz

Front Cover
A&C Black, Sep 5, 2011 - Travel - 528 pages
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'A wildly funny account of his travels ... it actually is a book which makes you laugh out loud on almost every page' - Literary Review

'The most successful attempt I know to grip the great dreaming Australian enigma by the throat and make it gargle' - Evening Standard

'A marvellous read ... he is a comic explorer in the grandest mould' - Financial Times
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The Man Booker Prize-winning author of The Finkler Question went Down Under - and this is what he found...

On what he calls 'the adventure of his life', Howard Jacobson travels around Australia, never entirely sure where he is heading next or whether he has the courage to tackle the wild life of the bush, the wild men of the outback, or the even wilder women of the seaboard cities.

In pursuit of the best of Australian good times, he joins revelers at Uluru, argues with racists in the Kimberleys, parties with wine-growers in the Barossa and falls for ballet dancers in Perth. And even as vexed questions of national identity and Aboriginal land rights present themselves, his love for Australia and Australians never falters.
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'Entertaining ... this is a book about exotic Australia - the fringes, the deserts, the opal mines, the Aborigines, and the North Queensland rednecks' - Guardian
 

Contents

On Wings of Poesy
1
Shiklone Troicee and After
20
Bungle Bungle
48
ArseEnd Charlie
77
Umpie Bong
96
Neither an Ong nor a Mo
130
Et In Arcadia Nos
153
Lost Orisons
183
Ich Hatt Einst Ein Schön Vaterland
275
Wher Edna Laide Me
298
An Interesting Place with Lots of Sandhills
327
Mintja
366
Ghostbusting
386
The Townsville Hoist
420
Gone Troppo
450
The Expulsion From Paradise
480

Granny Apples
206
The Town with a ª of Gold
234
A Roomette with a View
265
Found The Spangled Drongo
508
Copyright

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About the author (2011)

An award-winning writer and broadcaster, Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester, brought up in Prestwich and was educated at Stand Grammar School in Whitefield, and Downing College, Cambridge, where he studied under F. R. Leavis. He lectured for three years at the University of Sydney before returning to teach at Selwyn College, Cambridge. His novels include The Mighty Walzer (winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize), Kalooki Nights (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize) the highly acclaimed The Act of Love and, most recently, the Man Booker Prize 2010-winning The Finkler Question. Howard Jacobson lives in London.

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