Prizewinning novelist and broadcaster Howard Jacobson was born in Manchester in 1942. After studying at Cambridge University he worked as a lecturer at the University of Sydney then at Selwyn College, Cambridge [CHK]. His first novel, Coming from Behind (1983), was inspired by his experience of teaching English at Wolverhampton Polytechnic in the 1970s.
Jacobson’s subsequent novels include Peeping Tom (1984), a comedy of sexual jealousy satirising literary biography; The Very Model of a Man (1992), a re-working of the Cain and Abel myth and No More Mister Nice Guy (1998), the story of television critic Frank Ritz's mid-life crisis.
From page to screen
Two of his books inspired television series. Roots Schmoots: Journeys Among Jews (1993) is an exploration of his own Jewish background, and Seriously Funny: From the Ridiculous to the Sublime (1997) is an analysis of comedy and its functions. As well as making television programmes – Howard Jacobson Takes on the Turner, (Channel 4, 2000), and Why the Novel Matters (a South Bank Show Special, 2002), he has written a travel book about Australia, In the Land of Oz (1987).
Prizewinning fiction
His 1999 novel, The Mighty Walzer (1999), set in the Jewish community in Manchester during the 1950s, won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing and the Jewish Quarterly Literary Prize for Fiction in 2000. Who's Sorry Now (2002) charts the life and many loves of protagonist Marvin Kreitman, the luggage baron of South London; The Making of Henry (2004) is a comic story of love, hope and disappointment.
Howard Jacobson won the prestigious Wingate Literary Prize three years running: in 2005, 2006, and in 2007 with Kalooki Nights. His latest book, An Act of Love, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2008.
Watch Howard Jacobson's interviews
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