The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson, Bloomsbury, RRP£7.99, 384 pages

Winner of the 2010 Man Booker Prize, Jacobson’s latest comic novel bounces ideas of Jewishness between three contrary characters.

When his wife was alive, all best-selling pop philosopher Sam Finkler was interested in was venting his anti-Israeli opinions and having affairs. Ninety-year-old Libor Sevcik, once a celebrated Hollywood journalist, mourns his wife’s death after many besotted decades. And Julian Treslove, a lachrymose lover with a worship fixation, is mugged after an evening with Sam and Libor – which has a curiously uplifting effect.

Devotees of Jacobson will find much pleasure in his sport with these joyfully over-drawn characters. Sam’s involvement with “ASHamed Jews”, a Groucho Club clique of vocal opponents to Israel’s foreign policy, grates against an undertow of anti-Semitic acts, while Julian embraces “the Finkler question”: should he become a Jew?

More or less passionless affairs punctuate this enjoyable study of identity and personal integrity.