Sir Terry Pratchett has today, Wednesday 30 May 2012, been named the winner of the 2012 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction for his novel Snuff (Doubleday). Praised by The Independent for being ‘As funny as Wodehouse and as witty as Waugh’, it seems only fitting for the 64-year-old author to win a prize that celebrates fiction that captures the comic spirit of P.G. Wodehouse.
The prize includes the naming of a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig after the novel.
This is the first time Pratchett has won the prize, although he has been shortlisted on three previous occasions for his novels Thief of Times (2002), Going Postal (2005) and Thud (2006). As the 13th winner of the prize, he joins previous winners including Paul Torday, Ian McEwan, Marina Lewycka and DBC Pierre in an impressive canon of comic fiction.
Snuff is Terry Pratchett’s 50thbook and the 39th in the Discworld novels. The book, which sees Commander Sam Vimes investigating a country house murder whilst on holiday, has become one of the fastest-selling hardback novels since records began. AS Byatt, in a review for The Guardian, commented ‘Pratchett is a master storyteller… He is a master of complex jokes, good bad jokes, good dreadful jokes and a kind of insidious wisdom about human nature (and other forms of alien nature).’
Peter Florence, a judge of the prize and Director of The Telegraph Hay Festival, comments: ‘I am thrilled he's won in this 25th anniversary year of the festival. He's consistently funny, inventive and with an acute, satirical view of the world.’
Terry Pratchett will be presented with the Prize - a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année and a set of the Everyman Wodehouse collection - at The TelegraphHay Festival on Wednesday 6 June. He will also have the honour of having a locally-bred pig named after the novel. Sir Terry will be speaking at the festival about his life and work.
The judges of the prize are: James Naughtie, broadcaster and author; David Campbell, Everyman’s Library publisher and Peter Florence.