Bridget Jones on Wodehouse Prize shortlist

Bridget Jones will go up against Jeeves and Wooster for the 15th Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize.

Helen Fielding’s Mad About the Boy (Jonathan Cape), the third novel about Bridget Jones, and Sebastian Faulks’ Jeeves and the Wedding Bells (Hutchinson) are joined by The Last Word by Hanif Kureishi (Faber & Faber), Straight White Male by John Niven (William Heinemann), The Thrill of it All by Joseph O’Connor (Harvill Secker) and Lost For Words by Edward St Aubyn (Picador) on this year’s shortlist.

The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize is given for the best comic fiction.

This year’s judges are broadcaster and author James Naughtie; David Campbell, Everyman’s Library publisher; and Peter Florence, director of The Telegraph Hay Festival.

Campbell said: “The shortlist for our 15th prize is one of the strongest we’ve ever had. All the books on the list are of great calibre and quality which makes the job of choosing just one of these witty, zestful novels as the winner almost impossible.”

This year’s winner, who will receive a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année and a set of the Everyman Wodehouse collection which now totals over 90 books, will be announced on 19th May, ahead of the Hay Festival.

The winner will also be honoured with the presentation of a locally-bred Gloucestershire Old Spot pig, to be named after the winning novel.

In 2013 Howard Jacobson won the prize for his novel Zoo Time (Bloomsbury) .