Assimilation in "The Finkler Question"

This very clever and often hilarious book written by Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize in 2010. It takes a look at the different Jewish identities that exist in Britain today but particularly in intellectual North London. These identities are once again foregrounded and called into question in the wake of the Israeli attack on Gaza.
One of the themes in the book that interested me is that it takes a serious look at assimilationist tendencies in British liberal Jewry by turning assimilation on its head. We have the protagonist, a Gentile who wants to become a Jew. He feeds off what he perceives is the tragedy and suffering of the Jewish people and wants to acquire their knowingness of each other and to somehow make it in the Jewish world.

Much more common of-course, is the Jew who wants to pass in the Gentile world – who becomes a kind of chameleon, a Zelig (reminiscent of the film by Woody Allen).
By turning the tables so to speak, we get to experience the feelings and paranoia from a different angle – one that enabled me as a Jew to identify with Treslove while at the same time appreciating the tragic consequences of an enterprise where someone who has failed to develop an identity of their own, tries to assume one that he perceives as stronger or more fitting to his need. In the end he becomes a pathetic character. I think we are shown that this could be the case for anyone who doesn’t have a sense of identity or who hates the one they have.