Howard Jacobson gets the man booker for "The Finkler Question" http://nyr.kr/dddWtF
In announcing the prize, Sir Andrew Motion, the chairman of this year’s panel, mentioned that “The Finkler Question” is “funny,” and much is already being made of Jacobson having written the first “comic novel” to win a Booker. Jacobson can be ribald and play with language—in “Kalooki Nights,” the protagonist keeps falling for women with a diaeresis in their name (Zoë, Chloë, Alÿs)—but he does not write light humor. “The Finkler Question” so far is the story of three friends: two Jewish widowers and Julian Treslove, an even more mournful fellow, even though he never married and isn’t Jewish, at least when the novel begins. But as events unfold, Treslove starts to think that he might be, or that others think he is. His private word for Jew is Finkler—his schoolmate, rival, and one of the widowers. The Finkler Question, in other words, is the Jewish Question—which is also at the heart of “Kalooki NIghts,” “The Mighty Walzer,” his travelogue “Roots Schmoots” (which became a BBC series), and his opinion column for the Independent.