Debut Irish author Ferdia Lennon has won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction for his novel, Glorious Exploits.
The book, described as “a delightful mash of contemporary Irish comedy and classical Athenian tragedy”, triumphed at an awards ceremony in London on Monday evening having featured on a shortlist that included fellow Irish author Caroline O’Donoghue for The Rachel Incident, David Nicholls and Dolly Alderton.
Lennon receives a jeroboam of Bollinger Special Cuvée, a case of Bollinger La Grande Année, the complete set of the Everyman’s Library PG Wodehouse collection, and a pig named after his winning book.
“For Samuel Beckett, the act of writing was the placing of stains on silence and nothingness,” Lennon said. “For me, it has always been more of a means to secure pig naming rights, so I am very pleased indeed.”
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He was also one of several Irish authors included on the shortlist for the Nero Debut Fiction Award, formerly known as the Costa Awards and Whitbread Prizes, which was announced on Monday night.
Dublin-born Lennon has a degree in history and classics from University College Dublin and a master’s in prose fiction from the University of East Anglia in Norwich, where he lives.
The Irish Times review noted Glorious Exploits as a worthy contender for the most original debut of the year. “Lennon’s novel has buckets of madcap energy and a hugely inventive premise. Set in Syracuse in 412 BC, it follows the fortunes of Lampo and his best mate, Gelon, jobless potters who attempt to stage Euripides’ Medea in a quarry where hundreds of Athenian soldiers are imprisoned during the Peloponnesian War. Add to this a narrative voice in modern Dublinese and you’ll have some idea of the whacky creativity of Lennon’s storytelling.”
Lennon has already won the Waterstones debut fiction prize and was shortlisted for Irish Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. He is joined on the Nero debut fiction shortlist by Co Mayo writer Colin Barrett for his Booker Prize-longlisted novel Wild Houses; London-Irish writer Orlaine McDonald for No Small Thing; and Lara Haworth for Monumenta. Donal Ryan made the fiction award shortlist for Heart, Be at Peace, which last week won Irish Novel of the Year.
The category winners, who each receive £5,000, will be announced on January 14th and the winner of the £30,000 overall prize on March 5th.
Irish authors Paul Murray and Michael Magee won the inaugural Nero Book Awards Gold Prize for The Bee Sting and Debut Fiction Prize for Close to Home respectively.
Nero fiction award shortlist
- Levitation For Beginners by Suzannah Dunn (Abacus)
- The Hypocrite by Jo Hamya (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
- Lost in the Garden by Adam S Leslie (Dead Ink Books)
- Heart, Be at Peace by Donal Ryan (Doubleday)
Nonfiction award shortlist
- Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women by Ellen Atlanta (Headline Non-Fiction)
- An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by Zeinab Badawi (WH Allen)
- Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst (Chatto & Windus)
- All That Glitters: A Story of Friendship, Fraud and Fine Art by Orlando Whitfield (Profile Books)
Children’s fiction award shortlist
- Bird Boy by Catherine Bruton (Nosy Crow)
- How to Survive a Horror Movie by Scarlet Dunmore (Little Tiger)
- The Twelve by Liz Hyder (Pushkin Children’s Books). Illustrated by Tom De Freston
- Chronicles of a Lizard Nobody by Patrick Ness (Walker Books). Illustrated by Tim Miller
