The Funniest Books of 2024

We’re here to discuss your shortlist of the funniest books of 2024. Has it been a good year for comic fiction?

I might not be allowed to say this, but this is the best shortlist I’ve seen in my time judging this prize. It’s going to be incredibly difficult to find a winner. I mean, nigh on impossible. We ended up with seven books on the shortlist this year, all of them extraordinarily good. And very different: from steampunk to romance to time travel. So yes, I’ve been really impressed. And if there’s ever been a moment when we need funny books, it’s now. These are books that will help people escape.

Is that the purpose, of comic fiction, do you think? Escapism?

It is. But it is also an incredibly serious medium. Some of our previous winners, like The Trees by Percival Everett, have taken very serious, even horrific, subjects. Through humour, through cartooning characters, you can make it readable and perhaps even more effective. Humour is a powerful way of making people look at an issue differently.

You know, Wodehouse did this himself. His books were very, very funny but they always had a deeper meaning. And all of the books on the shortlist this year have depth to them, even the ones that seem so light.

Shall we start with A Beginner’s Guide to Breaking and Entering by Andrew Hunter Murray? He’s a previous Five Books interviewee; he recommended the best novels about the super-rich. This book riffs further on that theme: its protagonist squats in luxurious second homes while their owners are away.

I loved this book. There’s such a strong voice that carries through. It’s insightful, it made me laugh, it made the story flow beautifully. Many writers have difficulty with this, as I’m sure you know. They might have a great story, but the voice of their character is secondary. In Beginner’s Guide, the voice is there straight away, from page one right until the end.

This book has speed, it has humour, it has great characters. And it’s a great concept. It would be fantastic to go live in other people’s houses. After I read it, I found myself wandering around Holland Park in London, looking at all the houses, dreaming that I could do the same thing.

It’s a brilliant book. Funny and original. And one of those books where I felt sad when I finished. I want another one just like it.

Sometimes we get books submitted that have great stories, but they are badly written. Sometimes there’s great writing, but a crap story. Sometimes they are simply not funny; we have no idea why they’ve been submitted. But this? Smack in the middle of the bullseye.

That’s a great endorsement. The second book on your shortlist of the funniest books of 2024 is a historical novel, Glorious Exploits by Ferdia Lennon. Previously you described it as “a dark Greek tragedy wrapped up in an Irish dramatic comedy.”

This is a book set during the Peloponnesian war but its characters could be existing today, and are written by an Irish writer with an Irish lilt. But somehow it works. These are Athenian slaves chained in a pit, creating a play and making pots. And it has all the elements of a buddy movie, elements of the absurd.

Now, I read this book in Syracuse, where it is set. I was there, and it was 42ºC, and I was surrounded by sweaty tourists running around behind the guides with their flags, I just felt that he’d captured the whole character of Sicily.

“We ended up with seven books on the shortlist this year, all of them extraordinarily good”

Now, I love history, I love Classics. And I think if you can take something like the failed invasion of Sicily in 412BC, and make a buddy comedy out of it—well, you’ve got something very unique. It’s tough to make slavery and death funny, but it does. In my six years of judging this prize, it’s the most unique book I’ve read. Or, perhaps, this and Percival Everett’s The Trees. I absolutely loved it. I thought, perhaps, I’d cheated by reading it in Sicily, but when I reread it on a cold, miserable Welsh day, I still thought it was extraordinary.

It does seem to have quite a lot in common with The Trees. It has the horror—in this case, the horror of war—and the buddy aspect.

Yes. We asked: Is this too serious a book to be in a comedy prize? But no, it’s not. Comedy can be anything. I laughed a lot while reading.

Shall we talk about Dolly Alderton’s Good Material next? It’s about a comedian whose girlfriend sudden breaks up with him. Why is it one of the funniest books of 2024?

I like Dolly. I think she can be a little Marmite—some people love her writing, others find it annoying—but I think she’s brilliant. Of all of her books, I think this stands out as a classic romantic comedy. Two people fall in love, fall out of love, fall in love, fall out of love. They have a shitty time, they have a good time. If you’re going to have a book like this, you want the best writer and she really is one of the best out there.

I’ve seen it compared to High Fidelity.

I think that’s a great comparison. If you like Nick Hornby, if you like bittersweet, funny romantic comedies, then this is your book. If you have a long plane journey, or you’re going through an emotional crisis in your life, then you’ll want to read this book. Have a laugh, have a cry, put some good music on the radio—you’ll have a wonderful time. That’s what great writing is about.

Each of these books does a different thing for you, emotionally. Dolly is the best at what she does.

Truly great romantic comedies are very rare. It’s a difficult note to hit, right? The romance drives of the book, but you can’t lapse into sentimentality. The comedy needs friction, but too much and you undermine the authenticity of the emotions.

Yes, and I think it’s more difficult to find a great romantic comedy book than it is to find a great romantic comedy film. Almost impossible these days. And I love the genre. You have to be in the right mood for this one, but as a group of judges we felt she’s done very well.

Next we have High Vaultage by Chris and Jen Sugden. The Financial Times called it a “joyously funny and absurd steampunk frolic that satirises both the era in which it is set and our own age.”

High Vaultage is steampunk fiction at its best. It’s alternative history on a massive scale. And, having read a lot of this kind of thing, it was not like any other book I’ve read. It stands alone as a great sc-fi, steampunk book: it’s funny, it deals with this bizarre, massive metropolis—

Right, it’s set in ‘Even Greater London’ in 1887. A setting that first appeared in their detective comedy podcast Victoriocity. 

Everything is recognisable but not recognisable. It really works. It’s a bit like China Mieville’s Perdido Street Station: it works on the same theory, that you can take something real, twist it into a pretzel kind of shape, leave it recognisable. And pair it with a phenomenal story. That’s what you have here. I really, really loved it.

Like Glorious Exploits, you can feel the electricity. The description is so strong that you have all those senses of smell and taste…. I didn’t want it to end, and when it did I wanted to go right back into that world. I think with a great science fiction or steampunk book, you can feel a bit cheated at the end, because you want to go back there but it’s not real. And it’s funny. I wasn’t expecting that. It deserves its place on the shortlist.

Those who like steampunk might enjoy our recent interview with Mike Perschon, who selected five of the best steampunk books. Next we have another work of speculative fiction, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. It’s set in a newly established government department where they test time travel technology.

Okay, this is romantic comedy, romantic tragedy, time travel, history, workplace comedy. It’s all these different things: a great comic romantic novel. It has a really weird premise. You never really understand why all this is happening, but you don’t care. The characters are strong, the story is strong. I can’t recommend this highly enough for anyone to read as a standalone novel right now.

It has a strong beginning, middle, and end. The fact that it is funny is almost secondary, because it’s funny situationally—funny in the way it’s written, in the observation.

It’s soon going to be made into an expensive television adaption by the BBC. Which makes sense. It has everything: love, romance, sadness. All that.

Next up we have Caroline O’Donoghue’s The Rachel Incident. It’s about two flatmates in noughties Cork and their romantic entanglements.

Without giving away too much about the jury’s deliberations, this book had a lot of champions. If you like this genre—perhaps more than Dolly—it doesn’t get funnier or better. It’s for anyone who had interesting, fun, romantic times at university or in their twenties. It’s instantly recognisable. That’s the sheer brilliance of this book.

Right. I must have been at university at the same time as O’Donoghue. I really appreciated the specificity of all the—dare I say—period details. She might have been living in my own student flat.

We’ve all read the books on the shortlist twice. You read it once, to get a first impression. Then again for a second impression. This book was brilliant first time around and even better on the second round.

It’s not easy to write about love in a way that feels authentic. It can come out false. There can very easily be a wrong note. And one wrong note can make a book not work. The Rachel Incident doesn’t put a foot wrong from page one to the end.

David Nicholls also captures the student experience very well in his mega-hit One Day. But it is his new book that has made it onto your shortlist—why is Nicholls’ You Are Here one of the funniest books of 2024?

This is a very easy read, and I don’t mean that in a bad way. This is not to say the subject isn’t complicated or emotional, it’s just very easy to read. That’s wonderful, a real skill in itself. It’s right up there with Nicholls’ best books. Would I say it’s his best book? That’s not my choice to make, but it’s up there.

It’s a love story between two hikers that unfolds at walking pace.

I love this idea—of rambling around, having long conversations. It’s a great premise, and it allows him to put all that extraordinary talent into the simplicity of one-on-one conversations, which are the spine of the book. Which he always does, but never with such intensity. I think that’s really clever, and it’s really funny. And you get to know the characters extraordinarily well by the end. I felt rewarded by the experience of reading it, and better for having read the book.

I don’t always feel that with a David Nicholls book. Sometimes I’m frustrated by the ending. I like a good resolution, and—not to ruin it—he resolves this book better than others.

I mean, when David Nicholls brings out a book like this, for it not to make the shortlist would be absurd. I mean, he doesn’t get a free pass, we all read it twice and loved it. He’s a demi-god of romantic fiction and he speaks to every single reader in their own language.

This is one of the strongest shortlists we’ve ever had. Every book stands uniquely and deservedly on the list. There isn’t a book here that doesn’t deserve to win. If you have to choose just one book to read… read all seven.

The winner will, nevertheless, be announced on 2 December.