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Rationalizing the Horrors of Israel’s War in Gaza | The New Yorker

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The novelist Howard Jacobson had already written a number of books, many of them about the British Jewish community, when he won the Booker Prize for “The Finkler Question,” in 2010, which the New York Times’ Janet Maslin called a “riotous morass of jokes and worries about Jewish identity.” In a review in this magazine, James Wood was more critical than the consensus, writing that the novel was “always shading toward the atavistic and reactionary,” and adding, “Jacobson has a weakness for breaking into one-line paragraphs, so as to nudge the punch line on us. The effect is bullying.” Jacobson is also a prolific writer and commentator on current events, and on Judaism in the United Kingdom; he’s spoken out against Brexit, and raised concerns about antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. His most recent novel is called “What Will Survive of Us.” Since Hamas’s attack on October 7th, which killed approximately twelve hundred Israelis, Jacobson has been increasingly outspoken about an

Save this story Save this story The novelist Howard Jacobson had already written a number of books, many of them about the British Jewish community, when he won the Booker Prize for “The Finkler Question,” in 2010, which the New York Times ’ Janet Maslin called a “riotous morass of jokes and worries about Jewish identity.” In a review in this magazine, James Wood was more critical than the consensus, writing that the novel was “always shading toward the atavistic and reactionary,” and adding, “Jacobson has a weakness for breaking into one-line paragraphs, so as to nudge the punch line on us. T

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