“If that made him heavy company sometimes, so be it. Who decreed that life was to be one long rowdy masquerade (punctuated with those little pets of melancholy indulged by a crowd who made a religion of their feelings)?”

British novelist and journalist

Howard Eric Jacobson is a British novelist and journalist. He is known for comic fiction, especially novels that explore the dilemmas of British Jewish characters. He won the Man Booker Prize. His writing blends humour with close attention to identity, culture, and private uncertainty. The comic edge is central to his work, and his novels often return to the pressures and contradictions faced by British Jewish lives.