ROOTS SCHMOOTS

THE FINKLER QUESTION

Former BBC radio producer Julian Treslove and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, are old school friends who have never lost touch with each other - or with their former teacher, Libor Sevick. Now, both Libor and Finkler are recently widowed. When the three dine at Libor's apartment, it's a bittersweet evening of reminiscence. Man Booker Prize Winner.

J (X Rated)

Kevern doesn't know why his father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a word starting with a J. Ailinn too has grown up in the dark about where she came from. Hanging over the lives of everyone is a past event shrouded in suspicion, now referred to as 'What Happened, If It Happened'. X rated, contains graphic violence and explicit sex.

LIVE A LITTLE

At the age of 90-something, Beryl Dusinbery is forgetting everything - including her own children. She spends her days stitching morbid samplers and tormenting her two long-suffering carers, Nastya and Euphoria, with tangled stories of her husbands and love affairs. Shimi Carmelli can do up his own buttons, walks without the aid of a frame and speaks without spitting. Among the widows of North London, he’s whispered about as the last of the eligible bachelors. Unlike Beryl, he forgets nothing - especially not the shame of a childhood incident that has hung over him like an oppressive cloud ever since. There’s very little life remaining for either of them, but perhaps just enough to heal some of the hurt inflicted along the way and find new meaning in what’s left.

THE MAKING OF HENRY

The life of the temperamental, acerbic Henry Nagle is turned upside down when he mysteriously inherits a lavish apartment and several offbeat new acquaintances, including a red setter named Agnus, a dyspeptic descendant of Robert Louis Stevenson, and a top-sided waitress, who demand his attention. Contains some offensive language.

MOTHER'S BOY: A WRITER'S BEGINNINGS

In Mother's Boy, Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson reveals how he became a writer. It is an exploration of belonging and not-belonging, of being an insider and outsider, both English and Jewish. Jacobson was 40 when his first novel was published. In Mother's Boy, he traces the life that brought him there. Full of Jacobson's trademark humour and infused with bittersweet memories of his parents, this is the story of a writer's beginnings - as well as the twists and turns that life takes - and of learning to understand who you are before you can become the writer you were meant to be.

SHYLOCK IS MY NAME: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE RETOLD

Howard Jacobson’s version of The Merchant of Venice bends time to its own advantage as it asks what it means to be a father, a Jew and a merciful human being in the modern world.

WHEN WILL JEWS BE FORGIVEN THE HOLOCAUST

Philosophers note that the burden of guilt is as difficult as the burden of obligation, and irritation with this burden can quickly turn to resentment. So should Jews therefore be careful not to present themselves as victims? Does the same law apply to anti-Semitism? Howard Jacobson wonders if this chain of animosity can ever be broken.

ZOO TIME

Struggling novelist Guy Ableman is in thrall to his vivacious wife Vanessa and her alluring mother, Poppy. In flight from personal disappointment and universal despair, Guy wonders if it's time to take his love for Poppy to another level. Fiction might be dead, but desire isn't. And out of that desire he imagines squeezing one more great book.