Howard Jacobson has revealed that his next book will be something of a departure for him — he is setting it in the future.

But it is a future that is all too familiar, a time when, the author said, a disaster has befallen the Jews.

In a interview with Israeli newspaper Haaretz, Mr Jacobson confided that the setting would be a “dystopian” world where once again the Jews are the victims.

“My imagination is fired by tragedy,” he explained.

“At the heart of it is the belief that there is something problematic about the Jews, for the non-Jews, that will never go away. I know it’s very pessimistic.”

The writer, who won the Man Booker Prize in 2010 for his novel, The Finkler Question, saw few reasons to be cheerful.

“I know that if miraculously we settled the two-state solution, Israel gave back whatever anyone wanted, and every Jewish banker gave away his money and every Jewish lobbyist stopped lobbying, then would the world love Jews?”

His answer was not encouraging. “What I see is not so rosy,” he said.