''Winkler'' is a 2006 novel by English food critic

Giles Coren Giles Robin Patrick Coren (born 29 July 1969) is a British columnist, food writer, and television and radio presenter. He has been a restaurant critic for ''The Times'' newspaper since 2002, and was named Food and Drink Writer of the Year at the ...

. It is a 'comic account of one man's search for meaning, identity, and a suitable response to the burden of history'.

''My Failed Novel''

''Winkler'' was the subject of a

Sky Arts Sky Arts (originally launched as Artsworld) is a British free-to-air television channel offering 24 hours a day of programmes dedicated to highbrow arts, including theatrical performances, movies, documentaries and music (such as opera perfor ...

documentary entitled ''My Failed Novel'' which featured

Jeffrey Archer Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare (born 15 April 1940) is an English novelist, life peer, convicted criminal, and former politician. Before becoming an author, Archer was a Member of Parliament (1969–1974), but did not ...

Hanif Kureishi Hanif Kureishi (born 5 December 1954) is a British playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist of South Asian and English descent. In 2008, ''The Times'' included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. Early l ...

and various other authors. The documentary was a broader meditation on the subject of failure but focused on the novel itself, which garnered a £30,000 advance yet only sold 771 copies in hardback and 1400 in paperback. In the documentary, the genesis of the novel was considered by a range of people. A contemporary critic of the book, Stephen Bayley, said the novel had a certain 'lavatorial awfulness' and 'an overwhelming obsession with bums.'

Reception

The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...

'' wrote, 'there is an infectious glee with which Coren pillories politically correct nostra and the scabrous humour and farce make him a worthy heir of Tom Sharpe'. A review by ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

''s Michael Bywater was written with the byline, 'Bright Spark dowsed in a swamp of disgust.' Bywater describes the protagonist of Winkler as 'too morally exhausted to attempt the construction of meaning for those around him. Winkler's default interaction is contempt or abuse, his disgust with the physical world – flopping flesh, sad food, corridor smells – boundless.' He added, 'wrapped inside Winkler's nihilism is a serious mediation on deeper matters: identity, wandering, return, and two questions which still cast the longest of shadows. What of the Holocaust, and what does it mean to be a Jew?' The book was considered in a chapter of Ruth Gilbert's textbook ''Writing Jewish: Contemporary British-Jewish Literature''.

Bad Sex in Fiction Award

The book won a 2005 Bad Sex in Fiction Award from the ''

Literary Review ''Literary Review'' is a British literary magazine founded in 1979 by Anne Smith, then head of the Department of English at the University of Edinburgh. Its offices are on Lexington Street in Soho. The magazine was edited for fourteen years by v ...

''. In the words of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', "Coren beat off heavyweight competition for the prize with an unpunctuated 138-word description of coitus, followed by the two-word sentence, 'like Zorro'." ''

ShortList A short list or shortlist is a list of candidates for a job, prize, award, political position, etc., that has been reduced from a longer list of candidates (sometimes via intermediate lists known as "long lists"). The length of short lists varie ...

'' magazine named it 'one of the absolute worst 'Bad Sex Awards' entries ever.'

References

{{improve categories, date=June 2020 2006 novels