Howard Redux: Jacobson Wins Bollinger Wodehouse Prize Again

Need a laugh? Booker winner Howard Jacobson has become the first author to twice win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, the UK's only award for funny literary novels. Having won the inaugural prize in 2000 for The Mighty Walzer, he's got it again now for Zoo Time, about a blocked novelist in love with his wife and her mother. It beat these four finalists:

• Joseph Connolly – England's Lane
• Helen DeWitt – Lightning Rods
• Michael Frayn – Skios
• Deborah Moggach – Heartbreak Hotel

Previously the prize has been awarded to Gary Shteyngart for Super Sad True Love Story, Geoff Dyer for Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, Terry Pratchett, Ian McEwan, Jonathan Coe for The Rotters' Club, and Marina Lewykca for A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, among others.