Howard Jacobson has won the internationally-prestigious Man Booker Prize, beating Irish author, Emma Donoghue, for his novel, The Finkler Question, it was announced in London tonight.
Announcing the results, the chairman of the judges, former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion said: The Finkler Question is a marvellous book: 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. A completely worthy winner of this great prize.
Besides winning the £50,000 prize, Jacobson, who has been twice long-listed for the Man Booker before, can expect a huge increase in worldwide sales for this work, and his earlier canon of work.
Paying tribute to Irish novelist Emma Donoghue, who was included on this year's shortlist for her book Room, Mr 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.
Jacobson's victory came despite an inexplicable flurry of betting on another of the short-listed novels, Tom McCarthys C, which led Ladbrokes to close betting last week when he was 15/8 on to take the top prize.
The five judges divided 3 to 2 in favour of Jacobson&s novel, though Mr Motion, who declined the opportunity to reveal the author narrowly defeated, insisted that all five are 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 between them," he told journalists in London's Guildhall.
"It is very clever about how sometimes we don't like our friends. That seems to be a very interesting aspect to it. The range of its tone is very impressive. 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 would be a bit over the top for me to say that it is Shakespearean, but 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.
Agreeing with the description of Mr Jacobsen's as Britain's 'great Jewish writer', Mr Motion said he has 'an extraordinarily rich backlist', adding that it is 'extraordinary' that this is the first time he was short-listed for the prize.
"It is comic, it is laughter, but it is laughter in the dark. 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 between them," he told The Irish Times.
Published by Bloomsbury, the novel is described as 'funny, furious and unflinching', tracing the prickly friendship between Julian Treslove, a professionally unspectacular former BBC radio producer, and Sam Finkler, a popular Jewish philosopher, writer and television personality.
Still friends with their former teacher, Libor Sevick, the two meet him for dinner in Libor's apartment where during a night reminiscence they turn back to a time before they had loved and lost and 'before they had prized anything greatly enough to fear the loss of it'.
Beside Mr Motion, the other judges were Rosie Blau, literary editor of the Financial Times; Deborah Bull, formerly a dancer, now creative director of the Royal Opera House as well as a writer and broadcaster; Tom Sutcliffe, journalist, broadcaster and author, and Frances Wilson, biographer and critic.
Saying that none of the finalists are 'masterpieces', Jonathan Ruppen of London bookshop, Foyles said: "Few picked him as their favourite, but the bigger surprise is that it's taken this long for Jacobson to win a major prize. He consistently combines wit, poignancy, erudition and elegant writing to produce wonderfully accomplished novels. He's a vivid and valuable example of how intellect and entertainment are not mutually exclusive."