Howard Jacobson Pens Trump-Inspired Novella, ‘Pussy’

British novelist Howard Jacobson, who won the Man Booker Prize in 2010 for his book The Finkler Question, has written a new novella inspired by the recent election of Donald Trump. Written rapidly in the two months since Election Day, the novella, titled Pussy, is being described as a comedic fairy tale and will be published in April.

As The Guardian reports, Pussy “tells the story of Prince Fracassus, heir to the Duchy of Origen, famed for its golden-gated skyscrapers and casinos, who passes his boyhood watching reality TV shows and fantasising about sex workers. Idle, boastful and thin-skinned as well as ignorant and egotistical, Fracassus seems the last person capable of leading his country. But what seems impossible becomes reality all too readily.”

That description certainly hits home for the millions of Americans who spent this last election cycle growing increasingly baffled and horrified.

Jacobson says he’s never written a book this quickly, but that the idea has “been brewing in me since the beginning of 2016. I was in the US early last year… and watching this man on TV in horror. It was unbelievable.” In what he calls a “fury of disbelief,” Jacobson “had to get up at the crack of dawn every morning and write it” after learning the results on Election Day.

Source: BBC News

Source: BBC News

It’s Jacobson’s hope that the comic satire of Pussy will be helpful for those who have reacted similarly to Trump’s rise to power, which many deemed impossible when the reality star announced his candidacy. In the days since Trump’s inauguration, the White House has already come under fire. The administration’s new press secretary Sean Spicer called an impromptu press conference on Saturday and lied to journalists, claiming that the previous day’s inauguration was the most well-attended in the country’s history. And on Monday, presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway defended this decision, calling the false claims “alternative facts.”

“Satire is an important weapon in the fight against what is happening,” Jacobson says, “and Trump looks like a person who is particularly vulnerable to derision.”

YouTube Channel: TheManBookerPrize

 

Featured image via The Arts Desk

h/t The Guardian