In The Land Of Oz

Description:
I'd gone along there, as a Pommy writer passing through, to do a quick interview and be asked how I thought I could get to the bottom of the place if I was passing through so quickly. You are always asked this by Australians. They can't believe that you have come to their country and aren't prepared to give at least seven years of your life to savouring the distinctive flavour, fathoming the peculiar mystery, of every one-horse town the bus happens to spill you out in. Australia: the sixth largest country in the world - and most of it empty. Of the inhabited continents, it has the driest, hottest and harshest terrain. Undaunted, and somewhat bemused by the challenge, Howard Jacobson set off on an adventure around Australia - all the way around. Travelling across Darwin, the Kimberleys, Perth, Kalgoorlie, Alice Springs, the Great Barrier Reef, Sydney and almost every one-horse, godforsaken town in between, Jacobson attempts to find out exactly what it is that makes the people of Australia tick. Along the way, he ponders questions of Aboriginal land rights, national identity, and the most flummoxing matter of all: the Australian male. Peppered with brilliantly witty observations and larger-than-life characters, In the Land of Oz is a wry, incisive and hugely affectionate portrait of life Down Under.

Review:
'The most successful attempt I know to grip the great dreaming Australian enigma by the throat and make it gargle' Evening Standard 'A wildly funny account of his travels; abounding in sharp characterization, crunching dialogue and self-parody, it actually is a book which makes you laugh out loud on almost every page ... A sharp, skilful and brilliantly funny book' Literary Review 'A marvellous read ... he is a comic explorer in the grandest mould' Financial Times 'Entertaining ... this is a book about exotic Australia - the fringes, the deserts, the opal mines, the Aborigines, and the North Queensland rednecks' Guardian

Author Biography:
An award-winning writer and broadcaster, Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester in 1942, 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 books include The Mighty Walzer (1999), winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize; Kalooki Nights (2006), longlisted for the Man Booker Prize; and The Finkler Question (2010), winner of the Man Booker Prize. His most recent, J, is shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014.