Howard Jacobson, novelist and essayist. He was born in Manchester and studied English at Cambridge under FR Leavis. After several years as an academic he published his first novel, Coming From Behind in 1983, and has since published fifteen more, plus six works of non-fiction. In 2010 he won the Man Booker Prize for The Finkler Question and was shortlisted again for J. He has twice won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic writing – to date a unique achievement. He lives in London with his wife Jenny.