H ere at Five Books , we love covering the shortlists for the annual Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction . The judges are fantastic at flagging up new books with humorous elementsāsometimes cosy, feel-good comedy and sometimes āseriousā literary fiction whose dark themes are offset by hilarious turns of phrase.
This year, to celebrate the prizeās 25th anniversary, its organisers decided to offer an extra award to recognise the āwinner of winnersā. To do so, they asked a group of judgesācomedian Tatty Macleod, designer Patrick Grant, television presenter Claudia Winkleman, comic Sindhu Vee, and Hay Festival founder Peter Florenceāto review every winning novel since the prizeās founding.
But how to choose the funniest book of the 21st century? Judge Tatty Macleod told Five Books : āāFunnyā can be a complicated thing to ask of a book, because you are not always necessarily going to be laughing out loud. Thatās a hard bar to hold a book to, especially if itās over 300 pages. I canāt expect to be laughing out loud all the time.
āItās more about whether the book is observationally funny, if it gives me an interesting perspective. Do I want to pick this book up? Is it like a warm hug? Because thatās what I look for in a funny book. Finding a book that captures that sense of lightness and escapism, or of going into a different world or a different life and losing themselves in that, and having a good chuckle along the wayāthatās what I was looking for.ā
Comparing older books with more recently published novels could be tricky, she noted. āItās been an interesting exercise to see how humour and comedy adapt over time.ā Nevertheless, it was a 2005 novel that ultimately won out, when the judges selected A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian as their winner. Its author, the British-Ukrainian writer Marina Lewycka, died earlier this year, but reportedly was told of her triumph shortly before she passed away.
āA Short History of Tractors in Ukraine captures perfectly the hilarious complexity of family dynamics,ā explained Tatty Macleod of the judgeās decision. āIt deals marvellously with the shifting relationship with ageing parents. Itās as absurd as it is moving and a very worthy winner for the Vintage Bollinger Prize.ā
2025
āItās a debut novel set in the Middle Ages in England. Itās narrated by a young girl, Tibb, who is very put-uponāa vagrant who is looking after her mother. Vagrancy is a capital offense, so she has to stay on the run. Itās written in this extraordinary register. The sensibility is very Chaucerian. Thereās low humour, bawdiness, slapstick, and it is all set within this world where people want to believe in miracles. Tibb falls in with a group of travelling players, who come up with a way to confect a miracle.ā ReadĀ more...
The Funniest Books of 2025
Stephanie Merritt ,
Journalist
2024
āWith no preamble, he presents us with an informal, chatty Syracuse of 412 BC. He can see the place and hear the tone so clearly in his head that the reader, whilst knowing perfectly well that both tone and story are fiction, never doubts him. Thatās quite a feat.ā ReadĀ more...
The Best Historical Fiction of 2025
Katharine Grant ,
Historical Novelist
2023
āYes, there are very good jokes in it. But itās also just a humorous way of approaching the world that feels like a beautiful infusion of sanity. Itās easy to be anxious, concerned, traumatised, disruptedā¦ the world is really difficult. But a bit of Mortimer makes it bearable and amusing, and he reminds you of the joy of talking and telling stories.ā ReadĀ more...
The Funniest Books of 2023
Peter Florence ,
2022
š Winner of the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic FictionāĀ Ā Shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2022
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āThatās one of the most powerful elements of this bookāthe disjunction between the horror and the humour. Again, this is a historical narrative, beginning with the killing of Emmett Till in 1955, and addressing racial oppression in the United States, but with wonderful moments of fantasy, mysticism, magic, mixed with knockabout farce. Itās disconcerting, while youāre thinking about the long tradition of lynching in the South, to have these Keystone Cops moments. But it does intensify the emotional response and keeps you thinking on every page about what it is really like to live with this kind of systemic injustice over centuries.ā ReadĀ more...
The Best Fiction of 2022: The Booker Prize Shortlist
Neil MacGregor ,
Art Historians, Critics & Curator
2021
š Winner of the 2021 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
Herman Gertsch married into money. Feeling self-conscious about his lack of career, he asks for a job in a glitzy new gallery in rural Somerset, where he soon fails his way to success. This art world caper features jet-setting dealers, snobbish curators and a case of mistaken identity. An entertaining satire with an extensive, pleasingly eccentric cast of characters.
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2020
āI used to work with this theatre director called Ken Campbell, and he used to say that the secret of comedy is silly plus sensible equals funny, while silly plus silly equals stupid. Flake , for me, is the ultimate silly plus sensible equals funny. Because itās ice cream trucks warring about whose space is whose, who should be selling ice cream on what land, that kind of stuff. Territory war, essentially. Thereās so much heart in it.ā ReadĀ more...
The Funniest Books of 2020
Pippa Evans ,
Comedians & Humorist
2019
š Winner of the 2019 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction š Winner of the 2020 Comedy Women in Print Prize
Nina Stibbeāauthor of the charming Love, Nina,Ā diaries written while working as a nanny for London Review of BooksĀ editor Mary-Kay Wilmersāfinally won the Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction in 2019 after previously being shortlisted in 2015 and 2017.Ā Reasons to be Cheerful, a humorous coming of age story about a young dental assistant in Leicester, was her fourth novel. Expect "sharp observations, period details and cheeky moments of insight and open-hearted affection" says The Guardian .
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2018
Prize withheld āafter judges failed to laugh ā
Ā
2017
š Winner of the 2017 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
The fourth book in the Bridget Jones's Diary
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2016
š Joint winner of the 2016 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic FictionāĀ Ā Shortlisted for the Womenās Prize for Fiction in 2016
When Annie, a struggling London chef, discovers she has unwittingly purchased a valuable painting in a second-hand shop, she finds herself a target of unscrupulous collectors, auctioneers and 'experts' of all kinds. "The book may on occasion be silly and over-the-top, even for a satire," declared theĀ New York Times reviewer. "But Ms. Rothschild writes with such exuberance and spins such a propulsive yarn that you happily accept these excesses as part of the package."
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Set in Dublin in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, The Mark and the Void follows French Ć©migrĆ© Claude Martingale through his daily life as an investment banker āquite literally, through the eyes of a fictional novelist called Paul. This follow-up to Paul Murray's breakthrough bookĀ Skippy Dies is tricksier than its predecessor, explained Ā Publishers Weekly,Ā but shares the same "quick wit". A "page-turner with smarts, an absurdist riff on our economic follies."
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2015
š Winner of the 2015 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
A gentle standalone comedy from the author of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series, which has sold more than 25 million copies. InĀ Fatty O'Leary's Dinner Party,Ā a good-natured American couple attempt to uncover their roots in rural Ireland, but suffer indignities at every turn. McCall Smith matches his comic invention with his trademark compassion.
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2014
šĀ Winner of the 2014 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
Edward St. Aubyn's satire on the pretentious world of literary prizes represents a departure for the novelist, best known for his shocking, semi-autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels. Widely received as a revenge novel, after the final novel of that series, At Last , failed to be shortlisted for the Booker Prizeāsomething St. Aubyn brusquely deniesāit has received mixed reviews. Expect "sly, chatty third-person narration," explains The Guardian, and a "constant onslaught of wordplay, bathos, farcical mishap and circular logic."
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2013
š Winner of the 2013 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
This satirical follow-up to Jacobson's Booker Prize-winningĀ The Finkler Question introduces the writer Guy Ableman, "a man ruled by pointless ambition and a blazing red penis." His twin preoccupations with his temptingly attractive mother-in-law and the decline of modern literary culture drives this rambunctiously clever meta-comedy.
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2012
āMost people will have heard of Discworld . There are 41 books in the series. Pratchett was an amazing and prolific writerā¦Snuff is one of those great ones, and it stands alone quite well. It is a cozy murder mystery set in a stately manor in the equivalent of the English countrysideāa place called The Shire, in which the local magistrates are the great and the good, and in which they are all complicit in a murderā¦The hero of this book is Sam Vimes. Heās one of the most important heroes of the Pratchett canon. Heās a cop and heās on vacation. A delightful trope of the police procedural is the cop on vacation who stumbles upon a murder, and this novel has some of the best little tasty elements of that. His loving and quite well-drawn wife, Sybil, has told him heās overworked and has conspired with his colleagues and his boss (whoās effectively the dictator of the city for which he is chief of police) to force him to go on vacation. Of course, Vimes immediately literally stumbles upon a murder.ā ReadĀ more...
The Best Noir Crime Thrillers
Cory Doctorow ,
Novelist
2011
āThis book was a lot of fun. Itās obviously fiction, but what I like about it is the way Shteyngart takes a pretty wonky concept in geoeconomics and makes it real. It begins in a not too distant America that is over a barrel with its Chinese creditors, financially strapped and therefore constrained in a lot of the geopolitical choices that itās trying to make in the world.ā ReadĀ more...
The best books on Geoeconomics
Jennifer M Harris ,
International Relation
2010
āI thought it was very funny. It was an interesting take on the perceptions of some of the big issues between society and scientists, and the fact that we as a society donāt really understand what scientists are doing. Scientists are these objects that go around winning Nobel prizes, but actually not many of us really appreciate that they are human beings as well. ā ReadĀ more...
The best books on Renewable Energy
Juliet Davenport ,
Environmentalist
2009
š Winner of the 2009 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
Jeff Atman, an arts journalist, meets the enchanting Laura while in Venice to cover the opening of the Biennale. The opening section, Dyer has said, is a play on Thomas Mann's Death in Venice,Ā but "operates at a far lower cultural level." In the Mann novella, he added, "Aschenbach's obsession with the young boy, Tadzio, is tied up with some quest for ideal beauty, in my book the romance with Laura is very carnal and hedonisticāthough that could itself be said to represent some kind of ideal."
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2008
šĀ Winner of the 2008 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
In a moment of recklessness, Tom Brodzinksi flicks his last-ever cigarette butt off a balconyāhitting a man below and setting off a surreal chain of events that will soon find him trekking through the desert hinterlands of a war-torn country. A smart, satirical, speculative novel that divided critics on its release in 2008.
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2007
š Winner of the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
A fisheries expert working for the British civil service is tasked with an impossible projectāpopulating the desert wadis of Yemen with Scottish salmonāin the name of improving international relations. Told in the epistolary style, the narrative takes the form of emails, letters, Hansard transcripts, and newspaper articles. It was adapted into a hit romantic comedy starring Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt in 2011.
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2006
š Winner of the 2006 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
A law-abiding housewife from Glasgow discovers her dark side in this comic thriller. Expect murder, mayhem and madcap missions in Brookmyre's ninth novel.Ā The Guardian declared it: "sharp, memorable and occasionally surprisingly touching".
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2005
š Winner of the Vintage Bollinger Prize for Comic FictionāĀ Ā Shortlisted for the Orange in 2005āĀ Ā Longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2005
In this humorous family dramaāwhich was a major bestseller on release in 2005ātwo feuding sisters join forces to see off a glamorously unsuitable suitor for their widower father. It was named the 'funniest book of the last 25 years' when it won the Vintage Bollinger Prize in 2025. Peter Florence, co-founder of the Hay Festival and chair of the judges, said they came to the book fresh eyes and still found its humour fresh. Lewycka "has us at the title," he said, "and she rocks us on every page. And itās a book that is reshaped by the 20 years since it was first published, by both the history of Ukraine and the story of refugee experience in the UK. The comedy is somehow both darker and more vivid.ā
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2004
š Winner of the 2004 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
The third book in the Thursday Next series, which takes a satirical approach to the crime and thriller genre. Thursday, the lead investigator, visits 'the well of lost plots', where stories goes to dieāand finds herself trapped in a complex web of fiction. Gloriously silly.
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2003
š Winner of the 2003 Booker Prize š Winner of the 2003 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
Texan teenager Vernon Little's best friend has just committed a school shooting, killing fifteen of their peers. When it seems like Vernon will be implicated in the press, he goes on the run. This exuberant story of a foul-mouthed fugitive was, as the broadcaster James Walton has described it, "one of the more unexpected Booker winners... possibly ever."
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2002
šĀ Winner of the 2002 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction
Two children play at domestic espionage in this beloved coming-of-age tale by the writer of Headlong andĀ Towards the End of the Morning The GuardianĀ called it "a slim and piquant novel of childhood"; it remains is a common feature on English A-level syllabi.
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2001
A group of school friends come of age in 1970s Birmingham, England. A hilarious and nostalgic coming-of-age tale, drawn heavily from Coe's own experiences, and which features, famously, an almost 14,000-word sentence. Expect dry British humour and postmodern elements.
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2000
āThe Mighty Walzer is certainly one of his best. Itās a novel about table tennis in the 1950s and is very autobiographical. What I love so much about it is that Jacobson has an eye for the folly of the sport but also for its grandeur. He has an ability to articulate the psychology of sport even at an amateur level. Even when it is being played at the local Allied Jam and Marmalade factory on a table in the basement where the ball keeps going behind stacked-up chairs or falling behind the stage. It was very evocative of my learning to play table tennis, and Jacobson has a rare genius for encapsulating the sociology of the thing.ā ReadĀ more...
The best books on Champions
Matthew Syed ,
Journalist
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