October 4 2023

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction Shortlist announced

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction has announced its shortlist of six titles in contention for this year’s award. The books on this year’s list highlight the funniest novels of the past twelve months, which best evoke the Wodehouse spirit of witty characters and perfectly-timed comic phrases.

The award is the UK’s longest running prize for comic fiction and previous winners have included bestselling novelists Christopher Brookmyre, Nina Stibbe, Paul Torday and Helen Fielding. Last year’s winner was Percival Everett for his bold, provocative novel The Trees.

Bob Mortimer Book Shortlisted for Award, Bruce Dessau, beyondthejoke.co.uk

The shortlisted comic fiction books are:

  • Darling by India Knight
  • Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit What Happened to Carlotta by James Hannaham
  • Mother Hens by Sophie McCartney
  • Murder at Crime Manor by Fergus Craig
  • Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors by Aravind Jayan
  • The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer

Others reporting this

What is the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize?

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is the United Kingdom’s first literary award for comic literature. Established in 2000 and named in honour of P. G. Wodehouse, past winners include Paul Torday in 2007 with Salmon Fishing in the Yemen and Marina Lewycka with A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian 2005 and Jasper Fforde for The Well of Lost Plots in 2004. Gary Shteyngart was the first American winner in 2011.

The Prize is sponsored and organized by Bollinger, a producer of sparkling wines from the Champagne region of France, and Everyman Library, a book imprint that is a division of Random House.

Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, Wikipedia

An interesting fact about the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse

In 2018, no one won the prize because the 62 nominated books just were not funny enough. [source]