Terry Pratchett wins Wodehouse award

Terry Pratchett wins Wodehouse award NEWS

Share this

Fantasy author Sir Terry Pratchett has been awarded the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for the novel that judges called a comic masterpiece.

British author Pratchett was named winner of the Wodehouse comic fiction award on Tuesday for his 39th Discworld novel, Snuff. Pratchett's Discworld series tell stories of a world set on the back of a giant turtle and Snuff sees his regular protagonist Sam Vines in the middle of a murder while on vacation.

'Yes, there are little jewels of language and comedy, but it's the generosity of spirit throughout the whole project which makes it such a comic masterpiece,' said Judge and director of the Hay festival Peter Florence.

'And even after all these years he's spent in Discworld, he actually keeps refining it and making it sharper and clearer. That's an extraordinary achievement. You would expect a slowdown but there's none of that, and that, I think, is almost an unparalleled feat,' he added.

Though it may seem PG Wodehouse and Pratchett couldn't be any more different in their writing, Florence believes the two authors are actually rather similar.

'There are so many things he does which Wodehouse did too. It's not just the playfulness of the language, he's also quite patently satirical in the way Wodehouse was,' he said. 'Wodehouse was really hard on fascism. He wasn't simply writing a comedy of manners, and neither is Pratchett. Both of their invented worlds are wrestling with the political realities of their times.'

Florence was joined on the judges' panel by broadcaster James Naughtie and publisher David Campbell.

As part of his prize, Pratchett will have a Gloucestershire Old Spot pig named after his novel. The author will also be honoured at the Hay Festival on 6 June.