Judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction think so!

The seven funniest books of the year have been announced – at least according to the judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction.

Shortlisted authors include Andrew Hunter Murray – of the Austentatious improv troupe and No Such Thing As A Fish podcast – Dolly Alderson, whose novel Good Material is about an aspiring stand-up, and One Day creator David Nicholls.

The winner of last year’s award – the the UK’s longest running prize for comic fiction –   was Bob Mortimer for his debut novel The Satsuma Complex.

Judges for this year’s prize are publisher David Campbell, Peter Florence, director of The Conversation at St Martin in the Fields, comedians Pippa Evans and Sindhu Vee, broadcaster James Naughtie  and Justin Albert, vice-chair of the University of Wales.

The seven funniest books in this year’s shortlist, and their descriptions are:

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 than 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.

David Campbell says: ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering is a page turner where every short chapter is a real surprise. Genuinely funny and original.’

Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon

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. A story of brotherhood, war and art; and - in the face of the Gods' apparent indifference - of daring to dream of something bigger than ourselves.

Justin Albert says: ‘A dark Greek tragedy wrapped up in an Irish dramatic comedy. Sad, poignant, visual and most of all very funny, Glorious Exploits is a transporting novel of exquisite excellence. Ferdia Lennon has written an extraordinarily beautiful first novel that resonates with the power of friendship, the solace of art and the horror of war. It is also very, very funny!

Good Material by Dolly Alderton 

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.  

Pippa Evans says: ‘Good Material is a beautifully observed laughter train through the modern dating experience. As ever with Alderton, there’s wisdom in amongst the hilarity as she explores the pressure for women to get down that aisle. I tore up my wedding certificate immediately. Then sellotaped it back together as I needed to apply for my daughter's passport.’

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 sci-fi mystery from husband-and- wife team Chris and Jen Sugden, creators of the podcast Victoriocity.

James Naughtie says: ‘Comic fantasy, grounded and shot through with the sharpest wit, High Vaultage is an adventure in an imagined sci-fi Britain that’s moulded into a recognisable place by a hilariously old-fashioned mystery, and two wannabe detectives that readers will cherish, and egg on their way. Chris and Jen Sugden have created their own wild world, and it echoes to laughter.’

The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley

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'. This literary romcom (with added time travel) explores what it means for Britain to reckon with its past. 

Peter Florence says: ‘Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of Time is a clever and funny time travel idea, pulled off with wit and high style. The book is simply great fun and she’s super-fluent. She writes sentences that make you happy. There are some laugh-out-loud gags, often about sex, and a generous intelligence that reminds the reader that hope and humour are what keep us going in the very wildness of life - then, now, and forever.’

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. From the host of the podcast Sentimental Garbage.

Pippa Evans says: ‘The Rachel Incident returns us to our 20-something selves, desperately trying to fit in whilst insisting on being different. A university farce, if you will. I was laughing (and occasionally weeping) from the first page to the last. Definitely needs a trigger warning for memory cringes.’

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. .

Peter Florence says: ‘David Nicholls is such a master at investing heartbreak and loneliness with a warm compassion. His wit is inviting the reader to smile, to play on every page. He has you laughing wryly as he takes every familiar romcom trope and charms it out of recognisable shape.’

Of the full shortlist, chair of the judges, Peter Florence, said: ‘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.

‘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.’

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

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 winner, announced on December 2, 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.

Published: 24 Oct 2024