British author Howard Jacobson has won the prestigious Booker Prize for his comic novel The Finkler Question, beating five others including two-time winner Peter Carey and the bookies’ favourite Tom McCarthy.
It is the first time in the awards 42-year history that a comic novel has been voted winner of the 50,000 pounds prize on Tuesday night.
Jacobson, 58, who had been on the list twice but had never been short-listed until this year, said: "these things get to you. What I wanted to do though is to feel that I can go on writing an entertaining novel even though the light deepens and darkens and this does become a very dark novel."
The Finkler Question, which follows the friendship between three mature Jewish men, two of whom have been recently widowed, was hailed by judges as “a profound and wise book”.
Sir Andrew Motion, chair of the judging panel, said Jacobson's writing shared qualities with William Shakespeare.
He said, "It would be a bit over the top to say its Shakespearean. But he certainly knows something that Shakespeare knew. That the relationship between comedy and tragedy are intimately linked.
"It is a book about Jewishness. But it is so much more than that. It is a book about male friendship — and how we don't always like our friends."
The book tackles the relationship between three friends — a former BBC producer Julian Treslove, Sam Finkler a popular Jewish philosopher and their former teacher Libor Sevick.
It had been the rank outsider on the six strong shortlist with odds of 10/1 of winning. Tom McCarthy had been favourite to win this year's award. Jacobson published his first book at the age of 40 after spending much of his early life in academia.
He also confessed that he gave up writing novels for a time in frustration and was seduced into working for television, including a series about comedy called Seriously Funny and one about Jewishness, named Roots Schmoots.
Of the six short-listed candidates Emma Donoghue's Room — the novel inspired by the Joseph Fritzl case — is currently the most popular with readers.
It has sold more than 27,000 copies and has jumped to number 14 in the top 20 bestselling fiction books. Andrea Levy's The Long Song, Damon Galgut's In A Strange Room and Peter Carey's Parrot and Olivier in America lost out.
Carey had been hoping to become the first writer in history to secure a third Booker Prize. Last year's winning book Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel, which follows the struggles for power in the court of Henry VIII, has now sold more than half a million copies.