Accolade for author's debut, A Little Trickerie

Rosanna Pike has won this year’s 2025 Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction for her debut novel A Little Trickerie.

And Marina Lewycka won a ‘winner of winners’ prize to mark 25 years of the prize for her 2005 novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. She died last month, at the age of 79, the day after the judges reached their decision.

 Pike received a jeroboam and a case of Bollinger Special Cuvée, the complete set of the Everyman’s Library P.G. Wodehouse collection and a pig named after her winning book. 

Inspired by a true story, A Little Trickerie is set in 16th century England and revolves around Tibb Ingleby, a vagabond who learns how to use trickery to get through life – until she and her friends come up with their greatest hoax yet.

Judge Pippa Evans said: ‘Rosanna Pike is so very playful with her use of language in this joyful and unctuous book. I fell in love with Tibb from the very first page and giggled right to the end.’

Fellow judge James Naughtie said of the book: ‘Silky and effervescent, it bubbles with wit and style.’

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The other 2025 shortlisted titles were: Friends of Dorothy by Sandi Toksvig; Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis; Last Acts by Alexander Sammartino; Murder Most Foul by Guy Jenkin; The Book of George by Kate Greathead; The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji  and The Unfinished Harauld Hughes by Richard Ayoade.

Peter Florence, chair of the judges, said: ‘2025 gifted us several fabulous contenders for this year’s prize, that ran a full spectrum of comic styles and just seemed endlessly entertaining. It was the closest multi-way call we’ve ever had, and we’re delighted by our winner, and by the whole shortlist.’

And of the ‘vintage’ award for the best winner of the past 25 years, he added: ‘It seemed a daunting idea to garland one book among so many as the funniest book of the last 25 years, but actually we came to a book that some people were discovering for the first time and were laughing aloud at and loving. 

‘[Lewycka] has us at the title, and she rocks us on every page. And it’s a book that is reshaped by the 20 years since it was first published, by both the history of Ukraine and the story of refugee experience in the UK. The comedy is somehow both darker and more vivid.  Marina died on the day after the jury met to decide the prize winner. I am so glad to know that she knew she had won.’

Published: 2 Dec 2025