In a vintage year, when currently nothing else in the world is seemingly funny, the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction has announced an extended shortlist of twelve titles in contention for this year’s award, in recognition of the exceptionally strong list of submissions it has received.

The twelve 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 phrases.

The award is the UK’s longest running prize for comic fiction and previous winners have included bestselling novelists Alexander McCall Smith, Helen Fielding, Howard Jacobson and Marina Lewycka.

The twelve funniest books chosen by this year’s judges, and comprising the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse for Comic Fiction shortlist, are:

Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes

Following on from celebrating 25 years of her widely loved and acclaimed novel Rachel’s Holiday,

Marian reunites readers with Rachel and the whole Walsh family, in this acute and heart-warming sequel, which sheds light on challenging contemporary issues with her signature humour, honesty and warmth. 

Are We Having Fun Yet? by Lucy Mangan

Are We Having Fun Yet? is a year with one woman, Liz, as she faces all the storms of modern life (babysitters, death, threadworms) on her epic quest for that holy grail: a moment to herself.

And, as if her family's demands weren't enough, she must also contend with the madness of parents, friends, bosses, and at least one hovering nemesis.

Harrow by Joy Williams

A fresh, powerful story of surviving ecological disaster and solidarity between the generations by a giant of American literature.

Impossible by Sarah Lotz

When fate brings Nick and Bee together over a misdirected email, the connection is instant. They feel like they’ve known each other all their lives. Lots of great love stories start this way. But nothing ends like Impossible. Moving, memorable and completely original, Impossible is a love story like no other. 

Last Resort by Andrew Lipstein

When a bestseller-to-be cuts too close to reality, its author must make a Faustian bargain - both on the page and in real life. A blazing debut novel blurring the lines of fact and fiction: a thrilling story of fame, fortune, and impossible choices.

One Day I Shall Astonish The World by Nina Stibbe

One Day I Shall Astonish The World is the story of the wonderful and sometimes surprising path of friendship: from its conspiratorial beginnings, along its irritating wrong turns, to its final gratifying destination.

Our Country Friends by Gary Shteyngart

Eight friends, one country house, four romances, and six months in isolation, Our Country Friends is a novel about love, friendship, family, and betrayal, a book that reads like a great Russian novel, or Chekhov on the Hudson, by a novelist The New York Times calls "one of his generation's most original writers".

The Echo Chamber by John Boyne

Powered by John Boyne's characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation, The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.

The Lock In by Phoebe Luckhurst

The Lock In is a hilarious story of housemates and hangovers and friendship and dating as four twenty-somethings discover what the worst morning-after-the-night-before really looks like . . .

The Man Who Died Twice by Richard Osman

The second novel in the record-breaking number one bestselling ‘Thursday Murder Club’ series, featuring the old (but far from past-it) team as they pursue a brand-new mystery.

The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris

Get Out meets The Devil Wears Prada in this electric debut about the tension that unfurls when two young Black women meet against the starkly white backdrop of book publishing.

The Trees by Percival Everett

The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk.

The judges for this year’s prize are: Peter Florence (Event producer, reader and co-founder of the European Festivals Forest), David Campbell (publisher, Everyman’s Library), Sindhu Vee (comedian), James Naughtie (broadcaster and author), and Justin Albert (Vice President of Hay Festival and Director of National Trust Wales).

Chair of the Judges, Peter Florence, commented: “What a feast of wonderfully entertaining writing and a delightful spectrum of comedy, wit, satire and knockabout farce. There are great books here, and authors who mine the darker seams of life with humour and humanity.”

The winner of this year’s Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction will be announced at a reception on Tuesday 22 November at the Bollinger Burlington Bar 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 63 submissions, published between 1 June 2021 and 31 May 2022.

Previous winners have been:

Guy Kennaway for The Accidental Collector (2021)

Matthew Dooley for Flake (2020) 

Nina Stibbe for Reasons to be Cheerful (2019) 

Helen Fielding for Bridget Jones’s Baby: The Diaries (2017) 

Hannah Rothschild for The Improbability of Love; Paul Murray for The Mark and the Void (2016)