Comic Novel Wins Man Booker Prize

We have a winner! In an upset win over a crowded field of candidates, The Man Booker Prize has been awarded to Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question. Jacobson’s novel is a humorous take on Jewishness that follows three friends as they tackle what it means to be a Jew in England—and it becomes the first comedic novel to take the prize in the award’s 42-year history. Jacobson’s work was “quite amazing,” according to Sir Andrew Morton, who chaired the judges’ panel. The Man Booker Prize is awarded yearly to the best English-language novel written by a citizen of the U.K., Ireland, or Zimbabwe.