Howard Jacobson wins Booker Prize

British author and columnist Howard Jacobson has won the Man Booker Prize for his comic novel The Finkler Question.

Jacobson, who beat contenders including double winner Peter Carey, received the £50,000 prize at London's Guildhall.
Chair of judges, Sir Andrew Motion, described the 68-year-old author's book as "very funny, of course, but also very clever, very sad and very subtle."

It explores Jewishness through the lives of three friends - two of them Jewish and one who wishes he was.

Accepting the award, Jacobson joked he had been writing unused acceptance speeches for years.

"I note that my language in these speeches grows less gracious with the years," he said.

"You start to want to blame the judges who have given you the prize for all the prizes they didn't give you. But they aren't, of course, the same judges.

"Tonight, I forgive everyone - they were only doing their job those judges, every one of whose names I could reel off."
Sir Andrew said the "marvellous book" was "all that it seems to be and much more than it seems to be." "It's highly articulate, everything works in it very well," he said.

"That is what you expect from him but it's also, in an interesting and complicated way, a very sad book, a very melancholy book."