David Nicholls and Ferdia Lennon vying for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction

Novels by David Nicholls, Kaliane Bradley and Ferdia Lennon are among the seven "wickedly funny" books that have been shortlisted for the 2024 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for comic fiction.

The list highlights the funniest novels of the past year, which best evoke "the Wodehouse spirit of witty characters and perfectly timed comic prose".

Nicholls is on the list with You Are Here (Sceptre), while Bradley is shortlisted for The Ministry of Time (Sceptre). Lennon is in the running for his Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize-winning Glorious Exploits (Fig Tree), alongside Dolly Alderton, who is shortlisted for Good Material (Fig Tree).

Caroline O’Donoghue is also vying for the prize, with The Rachel Incident (Virago). Meanwhile, Chris and Jen Sugden are shortlisted for High Vaultage (Gollancz), and Andrew Hunter Murray is on the list with A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering (Hutchinson Heinemann).

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 (Everyman’s Library).

"There are some wickedly funny concepts here, and some beautiful observational humour as characters fall through love and anxiety," judges’ chair Peter Florence said of the shortlisted titles. "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 will be announced at a reception on 2nd December in London, and 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.

Last year’s winning book was Bob Mortimer’s The Satsuma Complex.