![Parrot and Olivier in America](/sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_tiny/public/images/parrot_and_olivier_in_america.jpg?itok=jHGtxI0V 94w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_small/public/images/parrot_and_olivier_in_america.jpg?itok=aX7rJn4A 116w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_medium/public/images/parrot_and_olivier_in_america.jpg?itok=nC3m7sGG 151w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_large/public/images/parrot_and_olivier_in_america.jpg?itok=izQWxPUm 164w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_x_large/public/images/parrot_and_olivier_in_america.jpg?itok=Af3neorx 207w, /sites/default/files/styles/2_3_media_huge/public/images/parrot_and_olivier_in_america.jpg?itok=P5pk5WqQ 271w)
By Peter Carey
Howard Jacobson
Victory at last for Howard Jacobson, self-proclaimed as ‘a Jewish Jane Austen’ with The Finkler Question, the first comic novel to win since Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils in 1986.
Even a comic novel needs more than gags and Jacobson’s book is also a moving examination of friendship, love, loss and, of course, Jewishness. The author, then 68, had almost despaired of winning the prize, stating that he was adept at writing unused acceptance speeches (‘I note that my language in these speeches grows less gracious with the years’).
But when the time came he rose to the moment, saying he’d spend the prize money on a handbag for his wife: ‘Have you seen the price of handbags?’
Winner The Booker Prize 2010
By Peter Carey
By Damon Galgut
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