''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 th ...

. 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, films, 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 and former politician. He was Member of Parliament (MP) for Louth (Lincolnshire) from 1969 to 1974, but did not seek re-election after a fina ...

Hanif Kureishi Hanif Kureishi (born 5 December 1954) is a British Pakistani playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and novelist. He is known for his film '' My Beautiful Laundrette'' and novel '' The Buddha of Suburbia''. Early life and education Hanif Kureish ...

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 political and cultural news magazine. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. ''The Spectator'' is politically conservative, and its principal subject a ...

'' 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 b ...

''. In the words of ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', "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

{{Italic title 2006 British novels English novels British comedy novels