Howard Jacobson: From Ping Pong Player to Booker Winner

By Jason Boog 

Novelist Howard Jacobson (pictured, far left) won the Man Booker Prize earlier this week. But before he won the prestigious award, he played ping pong.

In November, It Books will publish Everything You Know Is Pong: How Mighty Table Tennis  Shapes our World by Roger Bennett and Eli Horowitz. The ping pong history contains a short piece by the new Booker Prize winner,  along with other writers like Jonathan Safran Foer, Nick Hornby, and Will Shortz.

Here’s more from the publisher: “Congratulations to Howard Jacobson. Booker Prize Winner.  And contributor to our humble book (forthcoming November 2) for which he wrote a magnificent rumination on Table Tennis, The Life Pursuit. Here he is with two more of our heroes, Jerome Charyn and Steven Berkoff.  Do yourself a favor and purchase his Ping Pong novel, Mighty Walzer without delay.”