Book details

Recently separated Phil Ockerman falls hard for Bertha Strunk at a tango lesson in Clerkenwell. Bertha also bears a strong resemblance to the seventeenth-century Venetian singer and composer Barbara Strozzi (with whom Phil happens to be obsessed), to the point where Phil is no longer sure which is which... Navigating several London Underground lines and considerable planetary activity, Russell Hoban's intriguing romance tangos its way through a world of infidelity, artificial eyeballs, baseball bats and music - never missing a daring, seductive step.< 'I urge anyone who thinks of arming or improving themselves with this year's Booker shortlist to tuck up instead with the collected works of Russell Hoban and a bottle of Glenfiddich. He is fun, shrewd, humane; and unique' Spectator 'Hoban is that rare bird: a writer whose voice is utterly his own. For my money, his wonderfully original novels will endure long after most current high flyers have hit the dust ... This is an eccentric, sharply observed, kind book. We need writers like Hoban' Salley Vickers, Independent 'My Tango With Barbara Strozzi is a haunting: exasperating, funny, sad and elegiac. Catch it before it disappears' Guardian 'A deceptively complex novel of ideas, about reality, identity and ontology, that is only masquerading as a sweetly simple boy meets girl story' Independent on Sunday DIV>