In a year when most of us could probably do with good laugh, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2022 has been awarded to Percival Everett for his powerful and important novel The Trees, published by Influx Press.

Now in its 22nd year, the award is the UK’s longest running prize for comic fiction and is designed to highlight the funniest novel of the past twelve months, which best evokes the Wodehouse spirit of witty characters and perfectly-timed comic phrases.

The winner was chosen from an extended shortlist of twelve titles, in recognition of the exceptionally strong list of submissions received this year. The announcement was made this evening at a ceremony held at the Bollinger Burlington Bar in London. Percival Everett receives a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année, the complete set of the Everyman’s Library P.G. Wodehouse collection and a pig named after his winning book.

Described by The New Yorker as "at once hilarious and horrifying" and by the Daily Telegraph as "satire in the great tradition of Swift by way of South Park", The Trees is a bold and provocative book in which Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can't look away. Confronting America’s legacy of lynching, it is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance, whilst at the same time a comic horror masterpiece.

Percival Everett is the author of nearly thirty books, including So Much Blue, Percival Everett by Virgil Russell, Erasure, and Glyph. He is a Pulitzer Finalist and lives in Los Angeles.

Percival Everett, winner of this year’s prize, said: “I am indeed flattered and honored by the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, if for no other reason because the name is so long.  I looked back at past winners to see that I am in fine and fancy company.  It's ironic that this prize for comedy goes now to a book about the American practice of lynching, but that's why I love comedy.  Comedy allows us for short bursts to be smarter animals than we usually are.  To realize the absurdity is to transcend the absurdity.  Funny that.  Thank you.”

Peter Florence, Chair of the Judges, commented: “Comedy can entertain, can mock, can tease out our compassion and empathy, it can make you laugh and smile and feel better about other people and even ourselves.  And Percival Everett’s The Trees can do something else as well. It can lighten the most atrocious darkness and tell truths in ways that begin to make sense of the absurdity of life.  He brings us back to the core of our own humanity. You have to go back to Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 to find this done so well as Percival Everett does it. He’s in that company with Heller and Swift, with Chaplin, Pryor and with Wodehouse. What a joy to read such a book. And yes, I’ve written out Chapter 64 by hand, in pencil."

The judges for this year’s prize are: Peter Florence (Event producer, reader and co-founder of the European Festivals Forest), David Campbell (publisher, Everyman’s Library), Sindhu Vee (comedian), James Naughtie (broadcaster and author), and Justin Albert (Vice President of Hay Festival and Director of National Trust Wales).

Join Chair of Judges Peter Florence in conversation with Peter Everette at LoveReading LitFest

The other 2022 shortlisted titles were:

Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes

Are We Having Fun Yet? by Lucy Mangan

Harrow by Joy Williams

Impossible by Sarah Lotz

Last Resort by Andrew Lipstein

One Day I Shall Astonish The World by Nina Stibbe 

Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart

The Echo Chamber by John Boyne

The Lock In by Phoebe Luckhurst

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman and

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris.

Image Credit: Eugene Lee

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