Skinny Legs and All - by Tom Robbins (Paperback)

About the Book

An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations. . . . It sounds like the beginning of an ethnic joke, but it's the axis around which Robbins spins this alarmingly provocative book.

Book Synopsis

A gutsy, fun-loving, and alarmingly provocative novel from the New York Times bestselling author hailed by Financial Times as "one of the wildest and most entertaining novelists in the world"

"Hilarious."--Milwaukee Journal
"A euphoric wonderwork."--Los Angeles Times
"Flat-out fabulous."--Playboy

An Arab and a Jew open a restaurant together across the street from the United Nations. . . .

It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but it's the axis around which Skinny Legs and All spins, in which a bean can philosophizes, a dessert spoon mystifies, a young waitress takes on the New York art world, and a rowdy redneck welder discovers the lost god of Palestine--while the illusions that obscure humanity's view of the true universe fall away, one by one, like Salome's veils.

Skinny Legs and All deals, in Tom Robbins's audacious manner, with race, politics, marriage, art, religion, money, and lust. It weaves lyrically through what some call the "end days" of our planet. Refusing to avert its gaze from the horrors of the apocalypse, it also refuses to let the alleged end of the world spoil its mood. And its mood is defiantly upbeat.

In the gloriously inventive Robbins style, here are characters, phrases, stories, and ideas that dance together on the page, wild and sexy, like Salome herself. Or was it Jezebel?

Review Quotes

"Tom Robbins is a vital national treasure."--The Oregonian

"Robbins possesses magnet-like power."--USA Today

"Funny and tough . . . Robbins is an American original."--Washington Magazine

"A phantasmagorical, politically charged tale you wish would never end . . . Robbins's lust for laughs is undiminished; this prescription for sanity couldn't be better."--Publishers Weekly

"Tom Robbins at his best--playful, sweet, smart, and full of that old Robbins magic."--Seattle Post Intelligencer

"A god of eloquence . . . Robbins refines the goofy into revelations."--San Jose Mercury News

About the Author

Tom Robbins has been called "a vital natural resource" by the Oregonian, "one of the wildest and most entertaining novelists in the world" by the Financial Times of London, and "the most dangerous writer in the world" by Fernanda Pivano of Italy's Corriere della Sera. His works include Jitterbug Perfume, Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. A Southerner by birth, Tom Robbins lived in and around Seattle from 1962 until he passed away in 2025.