Steve Toltz shortlisted for Wodehouse prize

Nomination for Man Booker shortlisted author

20 May 2009

Steve Toltz is one of six nominees for this year's Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Toltz, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2008 with A Fraction of the Whole, is up against Christopher Brookmyre  Geoff Dyer, Lissa Evans, James Hamilton-Paterson and first-time novelist Sasa Stanisic.

The prize is given to the best comic novel published in the past 12 months and the winner will be announced at the Guardian Hay Festival.

The winner will receive a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année plus a set of the Everyman Wodehouse collection. As is tradition, they will also have a locally-bred Gloucestershire Old Spot pig named after their novel.

Previous winners include Will Self, Howard Jacobson, Paul Torday, Marina Lewycka and DBC Pierre. The judges for this year's prize are broadcaster and author, James Naughtie; Everyman publisher, David Campbell; and director of the Guardian Hay Festival, Peter Florence.

Everyman's publisher, David Campbell, said: "Yet again another very strong shortlist. There are some very good and funny books here."

The six shortlisted novels:

A Snowball in Hell by Christopher Brookmyre (Little, Brown)

Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer (Canongate Books)

Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans (Transworld/Doubleday)

Rancid Pansies by James Hamilton-Paterson (Faber)

How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone by Sasa Stanisic (Orion Books/Weidenfeld & Nicolson)

A Fraction of the Whole by Steve Toltz (Penguin/Hamish Hamilton)

Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction

The Man Booker Prize Fiction at its finest