HOWARD JACOBSON has won the prestigious Man Booker Prize, beating Irish author Emma Donoghue's Roomand four other shortlisted novels with his work, The Finkler Question.
Describing Jacobson’s book as “marvellous”, former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion said: “[It is] 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.”
The British author had not been one of the favourites for the award, though the result will come as a relief to bookmakers, who had faced large outlays if Tom McCarthy's Chad won.
The influence of the Man Booker, which carries with it a £50,000 (€56,000) prize, on international book sales is shown by the experience of last year’s winner, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, which has since sold 500,000 copies.
Paying tribute to Emma Donoghue’s novel, Motion said: “We liked it very much. That is why it was there. It is done extraordinarily well.
The thing that appealed particularly to me about it is that it deals very interestingly with a dreadful imprisonment but then after that, it has a second bit to it, which is what happens after they get out.
“In that sense it is two books for the price of one and all the more impressive for that.”
The other books on the short-list were the three-times nominated, Peter Carey for Parrot and Olivier in America; Damon Galgut for In a Strange Roomand Andrea Levy for The Long Song. The five judges divided three-two in favour of Jacobson's novel, though Motion, who declined the opportunity to reveal the author narrowly defeated, insisted that all five were delighted with the final choice.
“It wasn’t a completely unanimous decision, but it was a decision that everybody is entirely happy with.
“That is not letting too much out of the bag. It was a very narrow decision,” Motion told journalists in London’s Guildhall.
The Finkler Question"is very clever about how sometimes we don't like our friends. You expect a book by Howard Jacobson to be very clever and very funny and it is both of those things.
“It is highly articulate and everything works, but it is also in an interestingly complicated way, a very sad book which is, from where I sit, absolutely a book for grown-ups.
“It knows something that Shakespeare knows, which is that in the great comedies the relationship between what is tragic and what is comic is very small,” he said.
Saying that he had “waited a long time”, Jacobsen said: “I did not think that I had a right to win, but I wanted to win this prize from the start. I am not alone in that. Every writer does.”
However, he was “truly flabbergasted” by last night’s victory. “This is probably the saddest novel I have written.
“I am getting older and sadder things are happening. I lost three very close friends during the writing of this. These things get to you.”
