Mimicry and Denial: Proliferating Identities in Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question

Abstract

Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question examines anti-Semitism in the contemporary United Kingdom, in particular Jewish life besieged by anti-Zionist antagonists. More specifically, the novel, with satire and gallows humor, explores the specific character of a postmodern anti-Semitism. In a society of fluid identities and self-reinvention, archaic prejudices reassert themselves tenaciously, and Jacobson explores possible Jewish responses to this predicament.