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"...a raucous novel... ribald satire... The world's smartest comic novelist vs. a TV reality star who ran for president while bragging about his genitals and threatening to lock up his opponent... For nasty women and their ilk,
this is hot revenge in print. And Chris Riddell's illustrations, starting with that irresistible cover, are brilliant."
"A brutal satire.... a distinctly Swiftian kind of parody. A fantastical satire about a truculent, egomaniacal, culture that produced him."
"Jacobson is the first major writer to transform his indignation at Trump's rise into a fully-fledged novel... Pussy - a biting dystopian satire about a Trump-like figure who is championed by a populace every bit as puerile as he
is..."
"A terrific new book! A comic fairy-tale about Donald Trump - satirizing the American President as a rude, ignorant, entitled, snotty little prince..." [Joy Reid]
"The book brilliantly portrays a world in which language and the complexity of ideas that it can convey has been devalued... The novel hurtles breathlessly through a bildungsroman of the young prince from 'baby celebrity' to
idling away his boyhood watching reality TV shows, to becoming a young man fantasising about prostitutes and being a Roman emperor, to the moment he runs for election... Fascinating."
"Bullseye, Mr Jacobson! This is a novel that has much to say about how Mussolinis like Trump
coerce others into succumbing to their profoundly myopic, Manichaean world-view by speaking to the worst within the human condition"
"...many aesthetic pleasures to be had in Pussy. If Trump's presidency is a source of continuing anxiety, then among its very few benefits is that it is has moved one of our finest comic writers to write an elegantly savage satire
of a man who defies satire."
"...a twisted fairy tale... stinging new satire about the current leader of the free world. Doesn't hold back from throwing haymakers at Trump."
"Jacobson is often on target and deliciously laugh-aloud nasty about not just the making of this rough beast but what in the American character enabled it to go slouching into the White House."
"Pussy is the first novel of and for our new epoch. It is a satire that asks what exactly the Donald Trump phenomenon was and how it was possible that such an obviously unimpressive, unlettered and untruthful man could emerge and
capture the imagination and votes of millions.... Poised, controlled and yet appropriately mirthful in the face of something so absurd."
"This Trumpian version of Gulliver's Travels has lashings of ridicule and scorn..."
"Magnificently illustrated by Chris Riddell (including an illustration of a pussycat curled above the protagonist), the novel tells the story of the lazy, vain, and obtuse Prince Fracassus, heir presumptive to the Duchy of Origen,
who lives within the Palace of Golden Gate, has hair 'the colour of lemon custard', and is a source of 'fracas' in both name and nature."
"Viciously sharp... 50,000 lacerating words in the form of a fable, one filled to its margins with viciously sharp humour and gossamer-thin allusions to reality.... Superbly spry, mischievous fun, yes, but the riot really kicks
up a gear when Fracassus is introduced to Twitter, a medium perfect for him as it absolves the user of the obligation to listen or respond.... A seething little nugget of a book."
"How creepily well realized and bleak Jacobson's vision of the Trump phenomenon turns out to be... It also captures, with chilling accuracy, the way Trumpism is a reflection of the post-literate world we increasingly inhabit..."
"A satire in Swiftian vein, this is Howard Jacobson's fifteenth novel and first hand grenade.... It has all the qualities of a fleet response: undigested rage, whip-smart wit devastating fluency and an aim as straight as an
arrow... This is the story, savagely well told by our greatest comic novelist, of how we got in the state we're in."
"Chapter titles include those such as 'In which Fracassus almost reads a book' (this is one book that should be hand-delivered to Trump Tower), and 'Fracassus discovers the price of freedom and tweets about it' - the dumbing down
of complex thought through social media is well satirised."
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