Author Howard Jacobson has waited a long time to win the Man Booker Prize for Fiction and last night he pulled it off with his novel, The Finkler Question, published by Bloomsbury. Long-listed twice - in 2006 for Kalooki Nights and 2002 for Who's Sorry Now - this was the first time he'd been shortlisted and he won on a three to two vote.
Jacobson also takes home a £50,000 prize, quite apart from the prestige, which will result in a boost of sales and a lot of media interest. The novel's themes include love, loss, male friendship and what it means to be Jewish today.
Former Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion, who chaired the judging panel said: 'The Finkler Question is a marvellous book, very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle. It is all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be. A completely worthy winner of this great prize.'
The judging panel included Rosie Blau, Literary Editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, a former dancer and now Creative Director of the Royal Opera House and a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.
Howard Jacobson (58) was born in Manchester, studied at Cambridge University and taught literature at Wolverhampton Polytechnic. He has written 15 novels and had always wanted to win the Prize. The novel is sad, occasioned by the deaths of close friends and he describes it as 'a dark novel', though it also contains humour. Sir Andrew Motion has described it as 'funny but so nearly adjacent to tragedy...it's highly articulate, everything works in it very well.'
Author Hilary Mantell's novel, Wolf Hall was last year's Man Booker winner. Since then she has sold over half a million copies in the UK and rights in 37 countries.
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