The winning entry

So just how good is it? Because of course those splendid people, the Man Booker judges, have rather prejudiced this review by going and giving their prize to Jacobson’s latest. If only they’d had the patience to wait for the launch of this blog. Because although not on the panel this year (September is such a busy time), I am always more than happy to drop the odd word of wisdom, share my insights, and generally do my bit to see that contemporary novelists are held to account for their various crimes against culture. And all in all, perhaps this year’s prize hasn’t been too badly awarded, because Jacobson has less to answer for than most. That is praise, by the way.

Firstly, don’t listen to anyone who tells you that The Finkler Question is a comic novel. As with Max Beerbohm’s Zuleika Dobson (another supposedly comic novel written on the eve of the First World War which concludes with a generation of Oxford undergraduates dying in circumstances of mixed absurdity and pathos), I could probably grudgingly accept the classification in deference to authority (such as a Waterstones poster, I suppose), but my heart would still say otherwise.