The 25th Annual Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction has announced its shortlist for this year’s award. The eight novels on this year’s list, at a time when laughing out loud is definitely the best medicine on the market, make up a stunning shortlist for 2025.
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Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction Shortlist 2025
In the year when the award celebrates its 25th Anniversary, in a crazy world that seems to have turned upside down and at a time when laughing out loud is definitely the best medicine on the market, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction has announced a stunning shortlist for 2025.
Commenting on this year’s outstanding shortlist, chair of the judges Peter Florence said: “What a fabulous year for comic fiction. We’re thrilled with this bumper shortlist of eight great reads. There is a delightful mix of comedies here from darkest satire and period farce to lightest humour. I can’t wait for the final jury meeting. Whichever novel wins will be a comic banger Wodehouse might enjoy.”
The Shortlist
Friends of Dorothy by Sandi Toksvig
After much searching, the happily married young couple, Amber and Stevie think they have found the perfect spot in Grimaldi Square. Despite the rundown pub across the way, the overgrown garden and a decidedly nosy neighbour, number 4 is the house of their dreams.
Stevie, a woman who has never left anything to chance, has planned everything so nothing can spoil their happiness. But upstairs in their new home, seated on an old red sofa is the woman they bought the place from – eighty-year-old foul-mouthed, straight-talking, wise-cracking Dorothy – who has decided that she’s not going anywhere.
It turns out that Dorothy will be only the first in a line of life-changing surprises. Friends of Dorothy is a touching, funny novel about a family that is not biological, but logical; a story close to Sandi Toksvig’s heart.
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis
When academic Nadia is disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, she decides to make a getaway – accepting a UN job in Iraq. Tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women, Nadia becomes mired in the opaque world of international aid, surrounded by bumbling colleagues.
But then Nadia meets Sara, a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just fifteen, and she is struck by how similar their stories are. Both from a Muslim background, both feisty and opinionated, with a shared love of Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines, Sara and Nadia immediately connect and a powerful friendship forms. When Sara confesses a secret, Nadia is forced to make a difficult choice.
A bitingly original, wildly funny and razor-sharp exploration of love, family, religion, radicalism, and the decisions we make in pursuit of connection and belonging, Fundamentally upends and explores a defining controversy of our age with heart, complexity and humour – delivered by one of the most fearless and talented new voices in contemporary fiction.
Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino
David Rizzo has been waiting for a sign from above. Owner of a failing firearms store in a sun-bleached corner of Arizona, he’s drowning in debt and desperate for a word from his estranged adult son, Nick. When Nick is brought back from a near-fatal heroin overdose, Rizzo believes there’s reason for hope: if Nick can return from the dead, so can his business.
The flailing father-son duo embark on a marketing ploy to create the most compelling television commercial for a gun emporium the world has ever seen. But their relationship is fragile, mired in things left unsaid, and when Rizzo unknowingly supplies the weapon in a school shooting, a crash of hijinks, hope and disaster ensues.
A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike
Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. Her mother has taught her that if you’re not too bound by the Big Man’s rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. But now her ma is gone.
As she journeys through the fields and forests of medieval England, Tibb discovers that there are people who will care for her, as well as those who mean her harm. And there are a great many others who are prepared to believe just about anything…
So, when the opportunity presents itself to escape the shackles society has placed on them, Tibb and her new friends conjure an audacious plan: her greatest trickerie yet. But before they know it, their hoax takes on a life of its own, drawing crowds – and vengeful enemies – to their door.
A tale of belief and superstition, kinship and courage, A Little Trickerie introduces a ragtag cast of characters and an unforgettable, endearing and distinctly unangelic heroine.
The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji
Meet the women of the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they’re nobodies.
First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She lives alone in a shabby apartment except when she is visited by Niaz, her young, Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter, who takes her partying with a side of purpose, and somehow manages to survive.
Across the ocean in America, Elizabeth’s daughters have built new lives for themselves. There’s Shirin, a charismatic and flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family’s future; and Seema, a dreamy idealist turned bored housewife languishing in the privileged hills of Los Angeles. And then there’s the other granddaughter, Bita, a disillusioned law student spending her days in New York trying to find deeper meaning by giving away her worldly belongings.
When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up being bailed out of jail by Bita, the family’s brittle upper class veneer is cracked wide open. Soon, Shirin must embark upon a grand quest to restore the family name to its former glory. But what does that mean in a country where the Valiats never even mattered? Can they bring their old inheritance into a new tomorrow together?
Spanning from 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s, these five women are pulled apart and brought together by revolutions personal and political. The Persians is a darkly funny, deeply moving and profoundly searching portrait of a unique family in crisis. Here is their past, their present and a possible new future for them all.
Murder Most Foul by Guy Jenkin
It’s 1593, Elizabeth I is Queen and everyone is terrified of the worst outbreak of plague in a generation. Shakespeare has only written six plays and is lagging behind his friend Christopher Marlowe, London’s leading playwright.
When Marlowe is stabbed to death in mysterious circumstances, rumours abound – but the one that won’t go away is that Shakespeare did it to remove his greatest rival. Will is determined to clear his name, and teams up with his old flame, Marlowe’s sister Ann, who has plenty of secrets of her own.
In their search to solve the crime, Will and Ann uncover a dark world of treachery, murder, and corruption – which in turn provides Shakespeare with scenes and characters which will appear in his greatest plays. Murder Most Foul is a dark, witty and fast-paced novel, from one of Britain’s best-loved screenwriters.
The Unfinished Harauld Hughes by Richard Ayoade
The gifted filmmaker, corduroy activist and amateur dentist, Richard Ayoade, first chanced upon a copy of The Two-Hander Trilogy by Harauld Hughes in a second-hand bookshop. At first startled by his uncanny resemblance to the author’s photo, he opened the volume and was electrified. Terse, aggressive, and elliptical, what was true of Ayoade was also true of Hughes’s writing, which encompassed stage, screen, and some of the shortest poems ever published.
Ayoade embarked on a documentary, The Unfinished Harauld Hughes, to understand the unfathomable collapse of Hughes’s final film O Bedlam! O Bedlam!, taking us deep inside the mind of the most furious British writer since the Boer War.
The Book of George by Kate Greathead
We all know a George. He’s the kind of guy who’s brimming with potential but incapable of following through; he doesn’t know if he’s in love with his girlfriend, but he certainly likes having her around; he’s distant from – but still reliant on – his mother; he swears he’ll finish his novel one day.
Sure, you might find him disappointing. But no one is more disappointed in George than George himself.
As funny as it is astute and as singular as it is universal, The Book of George is a deft, unexpectedly moving never-coming-of-age tale and a portrait of one man, but also countless others.
The shortlist was chosen from a record 107 submissions, published between 1 June 2024 and 31 May 2025.
The distinguished judges for this year’s prize are: Peter Florence (Director of The Conversation
at St Martin in the Fields), Pippa Evans (comedian), Stephanie Merritt (novelist and critic), James Naughtie (broadcaster and author), Justin Albert (Vice Chair, University of Wales and Chair, Rewilding Britain), and David Campbell (publisher, Everyman’s Library).
Last year’s winner was Ferdia Lennon for his brilliantly funny debut novel Glorious Exploits.
The winner of this year’s Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction will be announced at a reception on 1st December in London. The winner will be awarded with a jeroboam and a case of Bollinger Special Cuvée, the complete set of the Everyman’s Library P.G. Wodehouse collection and a pig named after their winning book.
If you enjoyed Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction Shortlist 2025, check out last year’s shortlist