Praise for The Finkler Question:

Profile of Howard Jacobson by Sarah Lyall, in The New York Times. Read article

"The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson Weisberg's Law states that any Jew more religious than you are is mentally insane, while any Jew less religious is a self-hater. The Finkler Question demonstrates this rule's applicability in Britain, where the striations of Semitism have their own complications and subtleties. It centers on three old friends, one a goy who thinks he might be Jewish, one a Jew ashamed of Israel, and a third who thinks the other two must be nuts. Like Phillip Roth, to whom he is fairly compared, Howard Jacobson is a magnificent prose stylist who is often at his most serious when he is being uproariously funny. This novel, which won the Man Booker Prize this year, is both a send-up of some very silly people, and an examination of Jewish identity in relation to rising tides of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. I don't think you have to be Jewish to find it funny, touching, and troubling." —Jacob Weisberg, editor-in-chief of The Slate Group Read full review.

“The book's appeal to Jewish readers is obvious, but like all great Jewish art — the paintings of Marc Chagall, the books of Saul Bellow, the films of Woody Allen — it is Jacobson's use of the Jewish experience to explain the greater human one that sets it apart. Who among us is so certain of our identity? Who hasn't been asked, "What's your background" and hesitated, even for a split second, to answer their inquisitor? Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question forces us to ask that of ourselves, and that's why it's a must read, no matter what your background.”—-David Sax is the author of the book Save the Deli: In Search of Perfect Pastrami, Crusty Rye, and the Heart of Jewish Delicatessen.

“Like all of his work, 'The Finkler Question' has a kind of energy that you have to look at through your fingers, like an eclipse," Jonathan Safran Foer, the acclaimed author of "Everything Is Illuminated" and "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," told The Times on Tuesday. "As the brightness of his brilliance is hard to look at, so is the darkness of his humor. I don't know a funnier writer alive.

Great! A review from Janet Maslin of the The New York Times.

"He's completely undervalued in the States," Foer added. "This is precisely the kind of thing that will change that." —from the Los Angeles Times announcement of the award. Read article.

‘The acrobatic wit and biting humor Jacobson displayed in "Kalooki Nights" and "The Mighty Waltzer" is honed sharp in "The Finkler Question." Masterfully, Jacobson will bury a joke only to knock you out with a punch line 10 pages later. Though undeniably a comic novel, "The Finkler Question" is a tragicomedy, centered on a wayward man whose quest for a self serves as a platform for Jacobson to explore the complexities of British Jewish identity…this is a book of big, rich ideas and, if those ideas sometimes take precedent over plot, it's still a joy being on Treslove's journey and inside Jacobson's head.’—Michelle Quint, San Francisco Chronicle. Read full review.

Here’s the op-ed/essay Howard Jacobson, author of The Finkler Question, wrote for the New York Times about the first day of Hanukkah. In addition to the NY Times op-ed today, Bill Goldstein from that paper will be on New York’s NBC weekend morning program recommending Finkler as a holiday pick.

“Brilliantly, painfully comic, “The Finkler Question’’ is a revelation even in the land that gave birth to Philip Roth.”—Amanda Heller, The Boston Globe

Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Quesiton is in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Holiday Gift Guide

“A striking novel and a subtle one… ‘The Finkler Question’ has all the qualities we expect from Mr. Jacobson—especially a mordant wit, sometimes as acrid as it is exuberant. He has been called the English Philip Roth, and it is true that the two authors have in common a white-hot indignation, at anti-Semitism and much else. Mr. Roth put such indignation on display most notably in "The Ghost Writer" and Mr. Jacobson in "Kalooki Nights," a novel set in 1950s Manchester that was longlisted for the Booker in 2007. Perhaps it was that book's very rawness that ultimately put off the prize committee. With "The Finkler Question" Mr. Jacobson has managed to channel his themes and his characters' emotions in a more palatable form—with nuance, insight and, yes, laughter.”—Martin Rubin, Wall Street Journal Read full review

Kyle Smith at the New York Post wrote an essay yesterday on “philo-semitism” based on his read of the novel.

Mostly Fiction

Jewish Ideas Daily

Algemeiner Journal

Wall Street Journal Q&A.

‘Elegiac—but also humorous—meditation on life’s big questions: life, death, the nature of justice, whether to sleep with a German. The book won the 2010 Man Booker Prize. Nearing the end of his 60s, Jacobson, who has likened himself to a “Jewish Jane Austen,” is a very funny man. His lead character, a London media type named Julian Treslove, is not Jewish, but he might as well be: He has a Woody Allen–size complex of neuroses and worries, and “his life had been one mishap after another.” Mugged by a woman who utters a mysterious syllable—“Ju,” Treslove thinks—while going through his pockets, he finds himself about as angst-ridden as an angst-ridden person can be. His widower friends Finkler and Libor, great successes in their day, are no pikers in the angst department, though, lonely and full of the usual aches and veys; as Treslove notes, “A man without a wife can be lonely in a big black Mercedes, no matter how many readers he has.” The three pass their days together gnawing various questions to the bone, not least whether, in the post-Holocaust days, it is possible to “contemplate having an affair with someone who looked German.” (Consensus: No, even if that someone was Marlene Dietrich.) When Libor’s great-niece, Hephzibah, sweeps into the picture, Treslove finds himself thinking much more about questions of the heart, even as Finkler, a writer of pop philosophy, is swept away in a flood of “ASHamed Jews” who “were not to blame for anything” but were in the thick of controversy all the same—for, Finkler sighs, the very word “Jew” (was that what Treslove’s attacker was saying?) is “a password to madness…One little word with no hiding place for reason in it.” Jacobson’s gentle tale of urban crises of the soul slowly turns into an examination of anti-Semitism, of what it means to be Jewish in a time when “the Holocaust had become negotiable. At turns a romp and a disquisition worthy of Maimonides; elegantly written throughout, and with plenty of punchlines too.’”—Kirkus Reviews

“The Finkler Question is often awfully funny, even while it roars its witty rage at the relentless, ever-fracturing insanity of anti-Semitism, which threatens to drive its victims a little crazy, too. This is, after all, a comedy that begins and ends in grief.” —Ron Charles, Washington Post Read full review.

“Rare is a work of fiction that takes on the most controversial issues facing Jews so directly _ and with enough hunmor, in telligence, and insight – that it changes a reader’s mind or two. Be warned: The Finkler Question will probably distress you on its way to disarming you. Can we pay a novel any greater compliment?”—B&N Review. Read full review.

Time magazine Q&A

Jeffrey Brown has a conversation with Howard Jacobson on PBSNEWSHOUR's Art Beat

 NPR.com report on award

New York Times report on award. New York Times excerpt

Los Angeles Times report on award

“It's about time. Howard Jacobson, a novelist who has been consistently overlooked by the British literary establishment, has landed the big one. The Booker. It feels as if the British novel has shifted on its axis. The Finkler Question [is] a clever, canny, textured, subtle, and humane novel…Although The Finkler Question is by no means a straightforward comic novel, it once again demonstrates Jacobson's mastery of the form….The Finkler Question is a fine and endlessly satisfying novel, and thoroughly deserving of the Booker.”—Matthew Syed, Daily Beast. Read full post

“Let’s hope that this recognition for ‘The Finkler Question,’ which was published in the United States today, gets Jacobson the recognition he deserves—not as a comic novelist, or a Jewish novelist, or a British Philip Roth—but on his own terms.”—Blake Eskin, The New Yorker “Book Bench” blog. See blog

“Winner of the 2010 Booker Prize, Jacobson’s wry, devastating novel examines the complexities of identity and belonging, love and grief, through the lens of contemporary Judaism. Julian Treslove, a former BBC producer who works as a celebrity double, feels out of sync with his longtime friend and sometimes rival Sam Finkler, a popular author of philosophy-themed self-help books and a rabidly anti-Zionist Jewish scholar. The two have reconnected with their elderly professor, Libor Sevcik, following the deaths of Finkler and Libor’s wives, leaving Treslove--the bachelor Gentile--even more out of the loop. But after Treslove is mugged--the crime has possible anti-Semitic overtones--he becomes obsessed with what it means to be Jewish, or “a Finkler.” Jacobson brilliantly contrasts Treslove’s search for a Jewish identity--through food, spurts of research, sex with Jewish women--with Finkler’s thorny relationship with his Jewish heritage and fellow Jews. Libor, meanwhile, struggles to find his footing after his wife’s death, the intense love he felt for her reminding Treslove of the belonging he so craves. Jacobson’s prose is effortless--witty when it needs to be, heartbreaking where it counts--and the Jewish question becomes a metaphor without ever being overdone.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review

“In tribute to his childhood pal, Samuel Finkler, Julian Treslove, a former BBC arts producer, has always privately thought of Jews as Finklers. Now in late middle age, Treslove and Finkler have remained friends and have also stayed close to their former history teacher and bon vivant, the nonagenarian Libor Sevick, another Jew. After a night out with his two old friends, Treslove is mugged by a female assailant who says something to him that sounds at first like, "Your jewels," but that he later interprets to be, "You Jew." This life-defining moment sparks an identity crisis, one in which Treslove, who has always been the envious outsider, comes to believe he might actually be Jewish. At the same time, Finkler, a widely regarded and well-known philosopher, joins the ranks of a group called "ASHamed," Jews who distance themselves from the Israeli cause in sympathy for the Palestinians. Just as an outbreak of violent anti-Semitic incidents causes Finkler to rethink his alliance with ASHamed, Treslove falls in love with Sevick's niece and becomes deeply immersed in Jewish studies. Verdict The novel's underlying question is: Can you choose to be Jewish or can you choose not to be? This Man Booker Prize nominee (it won!) is as entertaining as it is provocative and will be essential reading for thoughtful readers on either side of the debate. Highly recommended.—Library Journal

Abstract: The British writer Howard ­Jacobson was so astonished when his latest novel The Finkler Question won the Man Booker Prize—the most prestigious award for ­fiction in the English language—that he asked the BBC interviewer who introduced her segment on the award if she could please repeat her opening phrase, “Howard Jacobson has won the Man Booker Prize.” Jacobson is, in his public persona at least, one of Britain’s most likable literary and media figures. It is a testament to his popular success as a genial but demanding presenter of TV arts programs that the reaction to his literary triumph has been so overwhelmingly positive. For as amiable as he might be, Jacobson fearlessly broke with the politics of the literary and arts world by decrying the ascent of acceptable anti-Semitism in Britain and, even more bravely, made it clear that fashionable anti-­Zionism is just a gussied-up version of the older hatred. Indeed, these themes are at the center of The Finkler Question, which is why his victory was so unexpected, not only to him but to everyone else as well. The fact that he was given the Booker the same month that Nobel judges in Sweden named Mario Vargas Llosa the literature laureate and Nobel judges in Norway gave the Chinese dissident Liu Xiabao the Peace Prize makes you wonder if Northern Europe has somehow slipped out of joint—and high above London, Stockholm, and Oslo, swallows are now dining on eagles.—Commentary Magazine

“And sentence by sentence, there are few writers who exhibit the same unawed respect for language or such a relentless commitment to re-examining even the most seemingly unobjectionable of received wisdoms. No wonder that, as with most of Jacobson's novels, you finish The Finkler Question feeling both faintly exhausted and richly entertained.”—Ottawa Citizen

“It is being touted as a comic masterpiece, but caveat lector. While you'll laugh yourself silly in places, if you're anything like me, by its end your heart will be twisted in pain. Please don't let this caution deter you from cracking open The Finkler Question. It is a big, brave, ferociously intelligent exploration of large themes, among them friendship, fidelity, betrayal and loss..”—Montreal Gazette

“The Finkler Question examines being Jewish in the 21st century, and delves into the relationship of three men bonded by friendship, loss, exclusion and belonging. It is a brilliant masterpiece, exquisitely crafted by one of the great writers of our generation. Jacobson’s attention to detail, and the nuances of his characters is expert. His British humor and wit resonates from beginning to end.” —Jessica Chmara, Jewish Journal Boston North