At a time when the importance of humour and a book that allows you to escape from it all has never seemed so crucial, the jury announces its 2024 shortlist of seven titles for the 2024 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.

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 prose.

The award is the UK’s longest running prize for comic fiction and previous winners have included bestselling novelists Alexander McCall Smith, Marina Lewycka, Percival Everett and Hannah Rothschild. Last year’s winner was Bob Mortimer for his brilliantly funny debut novel The Satsuma Complex.

Each of the shortlisted authors will receive a Magnum of Bollinger Special Cuvée and a copy of The Code of The Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse, published by Everyman’s Library.

The Shortlist:

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon 

LoveReading's Joanne Owen described this book as "an original, fascinating, and focused novel that explores the brutality of war and brotherhood of men during the Peloponnesian War in 412BC. "

It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected and hanging on by the slimmest of threads. Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. With not much to fill their time, they take to visiting the nearby quarry, where they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides in return for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives. And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. Because after all, you can hate the Athenians for invading your territory, but still love their poetry. An exhilarating and fiercely original story of brotherhood, war and art; and - in the face of the Gods' apparent indifference - of daring to dream of something bigger than ourselves.

Good Material by Dolly Alderton 

LoveReading's Deborah Maclaren commented: "Yet again Alderton delivers a fresh, funny, relatable read that is so recognisable, so real. I bloody love her. Love. Life. The agony of heartbreak. Permeated by peals of laughter. Bravo"

Every relationship has one beginning. This one has two endings. Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can't work out why she stopped. Now he is without a home, waiting for his stand-up career to take off, and wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn't looking. Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak at a time when everything he thought he knew about women, and flat-sharing, and his friendships has transformed beyond recognition, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of their broken relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him. Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story. A sharply funny, beautifully observed and exquisitely relatable story of heartbreak and friendship, and how to survive both – from the former co-host and co-creator of the podcast ‘The High Low’.

A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray 

Al lives in wealthy people’s second houses while the real owners are away. He’s charming, highly skilled at avoiding attention, and sees himself more as an unofficial house-sitter that an actual criminal. Really, it’s just his way of beating the housing crisis. There’s a long list of people who disagree with him, and when Al and his friends find themselves with a dead body, all his carefully crafted rules honed over eight years of ‘interloping’ are literally shot to pieces.

A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering is a brilliantly funny, thoroughly entertaining new novel from the comedy writer and co-host of the award-winning podcast ‘No Such Thing As A Fish’ Andrew Hunter Murray.

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

"When a secret service agent is assigned to a ‘time immigrant’ – an Arctic Explorer from 1847 – she risks everything by falling in love with him" comments LoveReading's Lily Lindon who awarded this a Star Book.

In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as 'washing machine', 'Spotify' and 'the collapse of the British Empire'. Utterly hilarious and unbearably sexy, this literary romcom (with added time travel) explores what it means for Britain to reckon with its past. 

High Vaultage by Chris Sugden and Jen Sugden

Even Greater London, 1887: a vast, uninterrupted urban plane encompassing the entire lower half of England and, for complex reasons, only the upper third of the Isle of Wight... The immense Tower casts electricity across the sky itself, powering the mindboggling mechanisms of the city below; the notorious engineer-army swarms through its very veins, building, demolishing, and rebuilding whatever they see fit; and - at the heart of it all - sits the country's first ever private detective agency. Archibald Fleet and Clara Entwhistle hoped things would pick up quickly for their new enterprise. No one is taking them seriously, but their break will come soon. Definitely... Probably. A wickedly funny, cozy sci-fi mystery from husband-and- wife team Chris and Jen Sugden, creators of the acclaimed podcast ‘Victoriocity’.

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue 

Everyone in Cork remembers The Rachel Incident. But what really happened? It's simple. It's complicated. It's about love, sex and friendship. It's definitely about betrayal. And, above all, it's the story of Rachel and James, two twenty-somethings who met at a bookshop, became best friends, and spent one unforgettable year screwing up and growing up. The hilarious international bestseller about unexpected love from the host of the award-winning podcast ‘Sentimental Garbage’.

You Are Here by David Nicholls 

You Are Here is a love story which unfolds on a walk across the north of England; ten days through the Lakes, the Dales and the North Yorkshire Moors. It’s the story of two lonely people, Michael and Marnie, both a little lost. But, over many miles, as they start to talk and share stories, the possibility of a new beginning opens up before them. You Are Here is David Nicholls at his very best: witty, unexpected, thoughtful, perfectly attuned to the motions of the human heart – and written in effortless, stunning prose.

Chair of Judges, Peter Florence, commented: “The joy of this shortlist is the sheer variety of comedy in play. There are some wickedly funny concepts here, and some beautiful observational humour 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 humour. 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."

The winner of this year’s Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction will be announced at a reception on 2nd December in London. The winner will be awarded with 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 their winning book.

The shortlist was chosen from 89 submissions, published between 1st June 2023 and 31st May 2024.

Previous winners were:

Bob Mortimer for The Satsuma Complex (2023)

Percival Everett for The Trees (2022)

Guy Kennaway for The Accidental Collector (2021)

Matthew Dooley for Flake (2020)

Nina Stibbe for Reasons to be Cheerful (2019)

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