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 50th
book 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 Telegraph
Hay 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.
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