Paul Murray and Hannah Rothschild have been crowned joint winners of the 2016 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for The Mark and the Void and The Improbability of Love, the first time that two authors have shared Britain’s leading comic fiction prize.
Murray, who shortlisted in 2010 for Skippy Dies, said: “I’m delighted and honoured. I first read PG Wodehouse as a boy and have kept returning to him ever since, longer than any other writer – which makes this award very special.”
Rothschild said: “To use a word that my hero PG Wodehouse invented, I am terribly ‘gruntled’ by winning this prize; sharing it with the great Paul Murray; and by the prospect of drinking Bollinger while reading an Everyman Classic.”
The Mark and the Void tells the story of two Dubliners: Claude, a banker who decides to rob his own bank and struggling novelist and crook, Paul, who helps him do it. Likened to Bonfire of the Vanities, the book was described as “an uproariously funny, devastating novel” by Neel Mukherjee and “a hilarious, blade-sharp satire on the banking system” by The Independent.
The judges said: “Murray’s setup is funny, the elegant zip of his sentences make you smile, his novel is an achingly topical, clever, delightful tale of folly and delusion. We loved it.”
Rothschild’s debut novel has been described as “A meditation on great art and human passion which reads like a confection concocted by Anita Brookner and Judith Krantz” (The Independent). The heroine finds herself plunged into the London art world where skulduggery and big characters abound. The book has also been shortlisted for 2016 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.
The judges said: “The Improbability of Love is a wonderful satire on the art trade, preposterous billionaires, Russian oligarchs and much else, a brilliant conceit faultlessly carried off. We were very sad to finish this gloriously funny novel.”
The two winners will be presented with pigs named after their winning titles, a jeroboam of Champagne Bollinger and the now 99-strong complete Everyman Wodehouse collection at the Hay Festival on June 4th.
Whilst the settings of the two novels – Dublin during the financial crisis and the London of the super-rich – appear very different, they share themes of satire, brilliant characterisation and stories of deception carried out in the name of art, love and commerce.
The two authors beat off competition from former winner Marina Lewycka (A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, 2005), the formerly shortlisted John O’Farrell and New Yorker Paul Beatty.
Britain’s only prize for comic fiction, The Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize recognises the best comic novel of the last 12 months. Murray and Rothschild join an impressive list of previous winners including Alexander McCall Smith, Howard Jacobson and the late Sir Terry Pratchett.
The prize was judged by a panel including Everyman’s Library publisher David Campbell, Director of the Hay Festival, Peter Florence, and broadcaster and author, James Naughtie. They were joined this year by a guest judge, writer and stand-up comedian Sara Pascoe, who said: “The joint winners are not only very funny, but very timely – an erudite commentary on capitalism, economics and those who have and don’t have money. They are each also fine novels and works of literature in their own right. Hooray!”
Naughtie added: “It was impossible to separate these two books, because they made us laugh so much. And between them they produce a surfeit wild satire and piercing humour about the subject that can always make us laugh and cry. Money.”
As well as a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig, Murray and Rothschild will also each be presented with a jeroboam of Champagne Bollinger Special Cuvee, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année and the complete Everyman Wodehouse Collection.
