Funny books

This year, to mark its 25th anniversary, the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction set out to find the funniest book of the last twenty-five years. We asked comedian Tatty Macleod, one of the judges, about the process of sifting through 25 previous winners to find the funniest book of the 21st century.

Every year, the judges of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction draw up a shortlist of books that made them laugh out loud. We asked the novelist Stephanie Merritt, one of the 2025 judges, to talk us through the eight books in the running for the title of the funniest book of the year.

What makes fantasy worlds so ripe for comedy? Hugo nominee Travis Baldree points toward our shared humanity, our love of anti-heros, and the power of back-to-front archetypes. He recommends the five best fantastical adventures to get us laughing – mostly at ourselves.

Do you have to be cruel to be comedic? It often helps, says bestselling humour writer, Andy Borowitz. He picks his favourite comic novels.

Satire is humour used for a moral purpose, explains American political satirist P.J. O’Rourke—though it doesn't have to be particularly funny and can be quite dark. Here, he chooses five classic works of political satire, books that lay bare the shortcomings of not only communism and fascism but also the two-party system and the quest for a perfect society where everyone is happy. Books by P.J. O'Rourke recommended on Five Books

Literature teacher from the University of Texas says the intelligence behind the confusion in comic novels must be essentially benign – like being tickled.

A prolific writer sometimes oblivious to events going on around him, PG Wodehouse remains so well loved because of his enduring characters and inimitable style, says Sophie Ratcliffe, professor of English at Oxford University and editor of his letters.

Humour can be better than mainstream media at speaking truth to power, says the American comedian and activist. He discusses masters of the art, from Jon Stewart to Joseph Heller

Ruth Wisse, Martin Peretz Professor of Yiddish Literature and Comparative Literature Emerita at Harvard and author of No Joke: Making Jewish Humour, identifies Tevye the Dairyman as the first standup comic and Sigmund Freud as Jewish humour's greatest analyst.

What makes for great comic writing? Is it possible to say? The author and former Simpsons writer gives us his personal choice of five pitch-perfect examples