What Will Survive of Us
  • Published: 27 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529921489
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $22.99

What Will Survive of Us

Formats & editions
Paperback
27 May 2025
EBook
1 Feb 2024
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Love can change your life. Can it survive marriage and middle age?

Love can change your life. Can it survive marriage and middle age?

‘Wonderfully wise, moving and heartfelt’ WILLIAM BOYD

‘A tender love story’ DAILY TELEGRAPH

*LONGLISTED FOR THE DUBLIN LITERARY AWARD 2025*

Lily falls in love with Sam the minute she sets eyes on him. It takes Sam a day or two longer. Curious, because Lily has never quite believed in love, while Sam thought he understood it inside out.

Lily, a documentary maker, and Sam, a playwright, are both in relationships that have quietly expired, and an affair takes hold that they are powerless to resist.

Arriving in mid-life, their relationship opens unexpected new worlds. But what will happen to them when familiarity and age begin to take their toll? What will survive?

‘Celebrates love in later life’
HARPER’S BAZAAR

‘Playful, knowing…a romping read in all senses’
EVENING STANDARD

‘Jacobson at his finest’
LINDA GRANT
  • Published: 27 May 2025
  • ISBN: 9781529921489
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $22.99
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About the author

Howard Jacobson

Howard Jacobson has written sixteen novels and five works of non-fiction. He won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Award in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer and then again in 2013 for Zoo Time. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question; he was also shortlisted for the prize in 2014 for J.

portrait photo of Howard Jacobson

Also by Howard Jacobson

Mother's Boy
Live a Little
Pussy
Shakespeare's Magnanimity
Shylock is My Name
J: A Novel
The Act of Love
See all

Praise for What Will Survive of Us

A wonderfully wise, moving and heartfelt novel. A profound and vital book

William Boyd, author of Any Human Heart

Howard Jacobson at his finest. An intense expression of romantic love and sexual desire

Linda Grant, author of The Story of the Forest

Something more subtle and melancholy than expected. In the best possible way, fans of Jacobson will not be disappointed

Observer

Jacobson has lost none of his garrulity and ebullience… What Will Survive of Us powers along with stretches of nimble verbal exchange in which the opponents are equally matched. And you're never far from a profound reflection on life's challenges

Literary Review

A rare gift and one to be treasured

Sunday Times

Essential human truths are conveyed through humour, melancholy and kinetic dialogue

Mail on Sunday

A tender love story... Jacobson’s sentences have always been things of beauty: ornate yet vigorous

Daily Telegraph

Funny, self-knowing and floridly romantic

Oldie

Equal parts funny and challenging, this is a clear-eyed view of long-term love

Daily Telegraph
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