Howard Jacobson on JQ-Wingate prize shortlist

“What a beautiful acknowledgement that Jewish identity is not fixed, but rich and evolving,” she added.

The shortlist also includes Alison Pick’s memoir Between Gods, describing her conversion back to Judaism; Zachary Leader's biography of Nobel Prize-winning writer Saul Bellow, and George Prochnik’s study of Austrian author Stefan Zweig’s exile.

The Liberation of the Camps by Dan Stone and KL: A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps by Nikolaus Wachsmann complete the shortlist.

The award is given annually to authors judged to have best translated the idea of Jewishness to their audiences. Entries for this year’s award include any works published between June 2014 and May last year.

Described as the Jewish Booker Prize, the JQ-Wingate will be handed out at a ceremony at JW3 in north-west London on March 14. The winning author will receive a £4,000 prize.

Daisy Hay’s Mr and Mrs Disraeli - which described the Prime Minister’s relationship with his wife through their love letters - fell by the wayside after being included on the longlist.

Also cut were The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky, The Girl from Human Street by Roger Cohen, The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild and The Hilltop by Assaf Gavron, about a diplomatic scandal in a West Bank settlement.