Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question as Holocaust Pedagogy

Abstract

This essay discusses Howard Jacobson’s Man Booker Prize-winning novel The Finkler Question as an intervention into a long running debate about whether global civil society has learnt lasting ethical and political lessons from the Holocaust. I argue that to date the novel’s critical reception has failed to recognise the novel’s desire to be read as an edifying political allegory or cautionary tale warning of a dangerous, historically familiar recrudescence of antisemitism that may be a prelude to a ‘Second Holocaust’. Exploring the reluctance of the mostly celebratory reception of the novel to acknowledge its direct political implications, the essay compares the public-political positions taken by Howard Jacobson, well known as a newspaper commentator in Britain, to the complex humanism evident in the writings of the Holocaust survivor Primo Levi.