Image: Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
A Winner is To Be Named on December 2
Not surprisingly, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize always sounds best near happy hour, and that’s because its winner receives a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée.
A jeroboam, at least in Champagne, is about 3 liters of wine, and if you’re in Bordeaux, about 4.5 liters.
In winning the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Comic Fiction Prize, you get not only a jeroboam of the Special Cuvée, but also a case of Bollinger La Grande Année, a complete set of the Everyman’s Library PG Wodehouse collection and, most entertaining, a pig who is to be named after your winning book.
The shortlist we’re noting today is scheduled to yield a winner to be announced on December 2.
That shortlist has seven titles, which reminds us that several book contests appear to have creeping limits on their shortlists these days. Perhaps a good regulatory move might be to place a controllata on this—a five- or six-title limit on shortlists for good discipline.
This award, although it flies somewhat under the radar in the UK’s teeming prize climate, has been in action since 2000 and can claim some relatively high-profile winners, such as Percival Everett in 2022 for The Trees. Everett on Wednesday evening in New York (November 20) won the United States’ National Book Award for Fiction for James, his evocation of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Alas, no pigs were offered to the winners of the National Book Awards, clearly an oversight.
More former pig-and-fizz winners you may know are Gary Shteyngart; Ian McEwan; Michael Frayn; and Will Self.
This seven-title shortlist was selected from 89 submissions published between June 1 of last year and May 31.
This year’s jurors are:
- David Campbell (publisher, Everyman’s Library)
- Peter Florence (former Hay Festival chief and director of The Conversation at St Martin in the Fields)
- Pippa Evans (comedian)
- Sindhu Vee (comedian)
- James Naughtie (broadcaster and author)
- Justin Albert (vice-chair at the University of Wales; chair of Rewilding Britain; and an advisor to the Hay Festivals)
The 2024 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Shortlist
| Author | Title | Publisher / Imprint |
| Andrew Hunter Murray | A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering | Penguin Random House / Hutchinson Heinemann |
| Ferdia Lennon | Glorious Exploits | Penguin Random House / Fig Tree |
| Dolly Alderton | Good Material | Penguin Random House / Fig Tree |
| Chris Sugden and Jen Sugden | High Voltage | Hachette UK / Gollancz |
| Kaliane Bradley | The Ministry of Time | Hachette UK / Sceptre |
| Caroline O’Donoghue | The Rachel Incident | Hachette UK / Verago |
| David Nicholls | You Are Here | Hachette UK / Sceptre |
About the shortlist, Florence, who chairs the jury, is quoted, saying, “The joy of this shortlist is the sheer variety of comedy in play. There are some wickedly funny concepts here, and some beautiful observational humor as characters fall through love and anxiety.
“In the 24 years of this prize, there have been so many different ways that books have made us laugh out loud. Here we’ve got jokes, farce, satire, spiced wit, and wry humor. Maybe the one thing all our writers have in common this year is that in every one of these novels there are sentences, paragraphs, and chapters that make you beam with pleasure.
“Pippa’s nailed the crux: that we need a book that you could give to anyone, certain that you were gifting them a good laugh and a great time. There are seven here.”
More from Publishing Perspectives on awards in books and the industry is here, and more on the United Kingdom’s publishing market is here.