The Man Booker Prize

Howard Jacobson has won the 2010 Booker Prize with his novel The Finkler Question.  Andrew Motion, chairman of the prize, was quoted in the Guardian:

Motion said the decision was simple. “It won because it was the best book. You expect a book by Howard Jacobson to be very clever and very funny and it is both those things. But it is also, in a very interesting way, a very sad, melancholic book. It is comic, it is laughter, but it is laughter in the dark.” Motion agreed it is a comic novel but said it was much more. It was “absolutely a book for grownups, for people who understand that comedy and tragedy are linked”.

Read all the reviews for The Finkler Question here and find the rest of the shortlisted books here.