Percival Everett wins 2022 Wodehouse Comic Fiction prize
American author Percival Everett has been announced as the winner of the 2022 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction with his bold, provocative novel The Trees, published by Influx Press.
Described by The New Yorker as "at once hilarious and horrifying" and by The Daily Telegraph as "satire in the great tradition of Swift by way of South Park", The Trees is a bold and provocative book in which Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, "in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can't look away".
The prize body says: "Confronting America's legacy of lynching, it is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance, whilst at the same time a comic horror masterpiece."
Chair of the Judges, Peter Florence, says that Percival Everett is "in that company with Heller and Swift, with Chaplin, Pryor and with Wodehouse".
Percival Everett says: "I am indeed flattered and honoured by the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction, if for no other reason because the name is so long. I looked back at past winners to see that I am in fine and fancy company. It's ironic that this prize for comedy goes now to a book about the American practice of lynching, but that's why I love comedy. Comedy allows us for short bursts to be smarter animals than we usually are. To realise the absurdity is to transcend the absurdity. Funny that. Thank you."
The winner was chosen from an extended shortlist of twelve titles, in recognition of the "exceptionally strong list of submissions" received this year. Everett receives a selection of Bollinger champagnes, the complete set of the Everyman's Library P.G. Wodehouse collection, and a pig named after his winning book.