The world can be a dark place at times, and we all need something light-hearted to entertain and distract us. Happily, there are a host of witty, satirical and downright hilarious books out there, waiting to put a smile back on our faces.
From comic novels and memoirs, to essays and poetry, humour has filled literature for hundreds of years, always making it more inclusive, socially challenging and downright amusing. Here is the ultimate list of funny books that will have you cackling with laughter.
Funny novels
Warm, effervescent and sweetly funny, this debut novel from New Zealand author Rebecca K Reilly is the perfect book to bring with you on holiday. The titular Greta and Valdin are siblings who share a flat anda penchant for romantic misadventures: the former is in unrequited love with fellow English tutor Holly, while the latter is still in love with his long-gone ex-boyfriend. Whether they can get it together enough to transcend their relationship situations – with each other and in their love lives – well, you’ll just have to find out.
A family party often makes for the most entertaining of settings, and Grown Ups by comedy queen Marian Keyes is no exception. Three brothers and their three respective wives and children are all gathered for one such event – but when one of the wives accidentally hits her head, she can’t help but spill all of the family secrets. It’s the characters in this story that make it so unbelievably funny, and Keyes is just as brilliant at writing them all, from the the very youngest to the grandparents.
“I have never seen a dead body or a female nipple. This is what comes from living in a cul-de-sac,” writes teenage diarist Adrian Mole, whose angst was universal thanks to the ironic wit and sharpness of social observation in Sue Townsend’s joyful The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 ¾ . The novel provides pure pleasure, not only in Adrian’s hapless pursuit of the Pandora Braithwaite, the girl with the “treacle-coloured hair”, but also in the depictions of marital disasters and suburban idiosyncrasies.
At first glance, a novel about a teenager with Asperger's syndrome solving a Sherlock Holmes-style mystery about finding a neighbour’s dog dead on the lawn, impaled on a garden fork, doesn’t sound rich in comedy. Yet Mark Haddon’s novel, the first book to have been published simultaneously in two forms – one for children and one for adults – is rich in deadpan humour, thanks to narrator Christopher’s inadvertently ironic insights into the people around him and their foibles and pretensions. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time will make you laugh – and cry.
Few people have written with as much zest and fun about modern Irish identity as Dubliner Roddy Doyle. In his marvellous Barrytown series the dialogue around the Rabbitte family in The Commitments , The Snapper and The Van crackles with life, humour and tenderness. Doyle has also written highly amusing children’s books, incidentally, especially The Giggler Treatment .
Marina Lewycka was born in a refugee camp in Kiel in Germany to Ukrainian parents. She was brought up in England. Her debut novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian is a family comedy about two feuding daughters trying to free their father, who is writing a history of agricultural machinery, from the clutches of Valentina, a Ukrainian divorcee who specialises in “boil-in-the-bag cooking”. The novel won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize.
Dolly Alderton, Marian Keyes and Meg Mason are leading the way as modern humorous fiction writers. Another in this bracket is Nina Stibbe, whose superb 2019 story Reasons to be Cheerful , the sequel to Man at the Helm and Paradise Lodge , won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction and the Comedy Women in Print Prize. The novel amply demonstrates her pin-sharp ability to revel in the inherent absurdity of everyday life.
An open-house viewing turned hostage situation doesn’t sound like it would be the perfect setting for a comedy, but Backman’s novel is nothing if not laugh-out-loud funny. It’s also a deep-dive into humans, and how we interact with each other – Backman is at his best and most insightful when he explores human connection with his signature irreverent wit.
The second-generation Asian immigrant experience in America has provided the inspiration for some terrific 21st-century fiction. Jade Chang’s sparkling debut novel The Wangs v The World is about a wealthy Chinese-American make-up tycoon who is devastated by the 2008 financial crisis and decides to take his wife and teenage children on a road trip across America. Chang brings an impressive lightness of touch to a story of identity that unflinchingly skewers lazy clichés and stereotypes.
Ah, fragile masculinity. Joshua Ferris brings a masterful touch to one of comedy’s best-loved subjects in this poignant and witty novel. When Charlie Barnes’ millennial son forces him to reassess his Mad Men-era persona – newspaper and landline – through the lenses of his offspring, his wive(s), his friends and business clients, he is left trying to rethink his life, with entertaining consequences.
Romantic comedy books
Sophie Kinsella has long been a trailblazer in the romantic comedy genre . Across all her work, you can’t help but laugh with (and sometimes at) her flawed, funny and relatable female protagonists. The Burnout
Yinka wants to find love. The problem? Her mum wants to find it for her. When Yinka’s cousin gets engaged, the aunties are desperate to help her find a date to the wedding, but Yinka is taking matters into her own hands. Themes of self-esteem, self-love and faith are explored, all done in a cleverly amusing way that means you will whip through this – and I’m sure you’ll recognise some overbearing relatives along the way.
A perfect rom-com premise: girl wakes up in hospital from a near-death accident next to her ex who she has forgotten to remove as her emergency contact. She then realises it’s time to build her life back, but could it just be that the worst day of her life ends up being the best thing that ever happened to her? Sweet, relatable and hilarious, this is a wonderful escapist read.
In this inventive and wry crime novel-meets-rom-com, a winner of France’s prestigious First Novel award, a wife leads a perfect life – she’s beautiful and successful, with two kids, a stunning house, and a wonderful husband of 15 years – yet she can never quite be sure that he feels as passionately for her as she does for him. So, she masterminds an increasingly complex set of tests and traps to get to the truth. What she finds provides the novel’s clever twist; what the reader finds is a deliciously funny exploration of the unknowability of our partners, and the importance of trust.
Comic classics
Routinely named not just one of the funniest books all time but, simply, one of the best, Joseph Heller’s absolute classic hardly needs an introduction. Published in 1961, Heller’s novel, which follows the lives of a motley handful of soldiers and officers as they navigate the absurdity of wartime, remains one of the finest satires of war ever written. But it’s Catch-22 ’s structure, as much as its ideas, that makes it special: by setting up jokes in earlier sections of the book, then paying them off Arrested Development -style with punchlines in later sections, Heller’s masterpiece yields laughs the first, second, and even fifth time you read it.
With Evelyn Waugh, readers are spoilt for choice, because his novels Vile Bodies , Black Mischief , The Loved One and Decline and Fall (jestful from the opening page) all fizz with waggish genius. However, we’ve gone for Scoop , a cracking satire about the world of newspapers. Waugh perfectly skewers a Fleet Street baron (Lord Copper, owner of The Daily Beast), while protagonist William Boot, the nature columnist mistakenly sent to cover a conflict in the African Republic of Ishmaelia, is a marvellous comic creation. Waugh was an expert at characterisation, making us laugh in fiction that was, paradoxically, full of profound wisdom and insight.
The humour of talented female authors was often underplayed in the 20th century but one book was acknowledged by contemporaries as a comedy classic - Stella Gibbons’s Cold Comfort Farm . It is a subversive, witty story about teenage orphan Flora Poste and her stay in Sussex with the doomed Starkadders. It's a book that has stood the test of time, with The Sunday Times calling it "probably the funniest book ever written."
P.G. Wodehouse remains to many the most celebrated comic novelist of the 20th century. There were 96 Wodehouse books published in the Guildford-born author’s lifetime, and he was still working on a story when he died in 1975 at the age of 93. There is a vibrant, stylish energy to the goofball relationship between the valet Jeeves and the idle Bertie Wooster, and fans of Wodehouse’s escapist novels, including the captivating Right Ho, Jeeves , relish the Edwardian slang – “cove”, “blighter”, “snifter” – that peppers their conversations.
A full seven decades after its original 1954 publication, Kingsley Amis’s tale of Jim Dixon – who lucks into a medieval history lecturer at a red brick university but must navigate the choppy waters of feigned professionalism, excruciating pretentiousness, and unrequited love (both from fellow lecturer Margaret and to Christine, the girlfriend of a Professor Welch’s awful son) to find success and balance – remains a timeless, searingly funny indictment of academic life, as well as a vivid snapshot of post-war England.
Dorothy Parker was a trailblazing Jazz Age humourist who purveyed her jocularity in short stories, poems, screenplays and criticism. Her highly original rapier wit is as fresh and challenging now as when she was freelancing for the newly inaugurated New Yorker magazine in 1925. Among her memorable one-liners was “What fresh hell is this?”, words she uttered whenever the doorbell rang that remain as entertaining today.
Written in 1968 but rediscovered and republished in 2022, this dry, hilarious snapshot of life in late-1960s London follows Min, a BBC audio engineer with a husband so milquetoast she often forgets he’s in the room with her. So when she finds herself the object of affection for a lodger she nicknames 'The Bloater’, the excitement is irrepressible – even if she finds him just as disgusting as she does strangely compelling. As contemporary as any novel written this year, The Bloater is a wry, funny take on flirtation, self-loathing, and the humiliation of desire.
Publications that combine visual and written humour are becoming commonplace in the 21st century – books such as Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison Bechdel and Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes by Mary M Talbot and Bryan Talbot – and one of the best modern ones was by Canadian artist Kate Beaton, who says she chose the title Hark! A Vagrant “for arbitrary reasons” when creating her comic strip. The cartoons were collected into a multi award-winning book in 2011. Her strips parody literary works and figures, such as the Brontës. Beaton has a real gift for caricature and great gags.
Funny non-fiction, essays and satire
Nora Ephron, the hugely talented writer behind movies such as Sleepless in Seattle, Heartburn and When Harry Met Sally, triumphed with her book I Feel Bad About My Neck – 15 typically smart, dry and incisive essays that are full of brilliant observational comedy. Ephron is self-deprecating about her own body, and the slow, steady downwards spiral that is aging. The book overflows with sharp wisdom, too, including the line “when your children are teenagers, it’s important to have a dog so that someone in the house is happy to see you.”
Subtitled A Guide for Occupants , Bill Bryson’s hugely bestselling 2019 Science Book of the Year (Sunday Times ) is such a compelling, humane, and hilarious read that you might not even notice how much you’re learning – until you put it down, only to realise that this clear-eyed, jaw-dropping exploration of the human body’s incredible powers has forever altered the way you think about your brain, heart, lungs, even your genitals. The Body is a must-read for basically anyone who stewards one.
Actor and comedian Rosie Holt has donned a new persona: a Conservative MP with no shame, no self-awareness, and a gift for staying loyal to her party’s leader, whoever they may be. From Brexit, to Partygate, to climate U-turns and Liz Truss’s 45-day tenure as Prime Minister, take a trip through recent history with this so-called Catalogue of Conservative Successes – the ultimate satirical retrospective for 14 years of political turmoil.
They say truth is stranger than fiction, but it’s often funnier, too. Just ask David Mitchell, whose historical title Unruly: A History of England’s Kings and Queens reveals “a tale of narcissists, inadequate self-control, excessive beheadings, middle-management insurrection, uncivil wars” and more, all from people as weird and wacky as you and me – but divinely appointed, of course. Perfect for lovers of the historical and hysterical, Mitchell’s writing shows how this long line of royalty shaped modern Britain, and why that matters.
History is written by the victors and populated by main characters, but any good storyteller knows that it’s the bit players that give colour and breadth to a narrative. And comedy YouTuber Adrian Bliss is a good storyteller: in this new work of delightful non-fiction, he scours the margins of history to unearth tales of the ferret Leonardo Da Vinci famously painted, Henry VIII’s servant who monitored the toilet door while he did his business, and many, many more. These are The Greatest Nobodies of History , and their stories are just as hilarious and noteworthy as anyone’s.
Funny memoirs
You might know national treasure Dawn French from any number of achievements in her incredible, varied career – but you might not be quite as familiar with the many, many times that she has been, in her words, “a complete twat”. Rest easy: The Twat Files is a comprehensive account of every time, in the last 60 years, French has made a mistake, messed up and misunderstood – compiled so that, as we laugh along to French’s hilarious book, we’re able to accept that maybe, just maybe… we’re twats too.
Conversations about mental health don’t always have to be serious. If you like to laugh when you cry, You Don’t Have to Be Mad to Work Here , the debut book from psychiatrist and comedian Benji Waterhouse, might be just the read for you. As humane as it is humorous, Waterhouse implicates himself and his own loved ones as he paints a compassionate, hilarious picture of an industry dedicated to helping people keep themselves together.
If you like to savour a laugh – really savour it – this multi-layered tale of food and ambition is for you. Heat was born when author Bill Buford was asked by the New Yorker to write a profile of famous chef Mario Batali, and Buford accepted the commission on one condition: that he work under Batali, in one of his restaurants. Soon, Buford was climbing the ranks and travelling to Italy to learn from Batali’s own teachers, whipping up a wonderful, illuminating mix of memoir, Batali biography, and behind-the-scenes kitchen non-fiction, all served with a generous helping of humour.
Mindy Kaling’s irreverent memoir Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? , which is part memoir, part lifestyle advice and comedy anecdote fest, was on the New York Times Bestsellers list for five weeks. Kaling, the daughter of Indian parents, grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and went on to star in The Office before starring in her own hit show, The Mindy Project. Her book contains an array of tongue-in-cheek observations on topics such as weight, race, consumer culture and Hollywood’s obsession with conventional beauty.
Comedy genius Spike Milligan wrote hilarious poems and books but his letters contain some of the best material he ever wrote. Private correspondence provided a brilliant outlet for Milligan’s eccentric imagination. He once wrote to the Marketing Director of Tetley Tea asking, “when you changed from square to round tea bags, what did you do with corners?”. Spike Milligan: Man of Letters is a book for anyone who loves tomfoolery and mischief.
Packed to the rafters with hilarious, shocking and cringe-worthy anecdotes, this book reads like a joy-ride through Daisy’s life – and what a ride it is. From accidentally auditioning to be a pole-dancer to trying to reach the afterlife in the back of a pub, it feels like Daisy – who found fame writing and starring in hit BBC series This Country with her brother – was born to make us laugh. She also talks brilliantly on what it was like growing up with her mad family in rural poverty and trying to make it in an industry that often felt like it didn’t have space for her.
In this candid and bawdy memoir, Tom Rasmussen, who grew up in Lancaster, England, speaks both as Tom and their performance alter ego “Crystal”. The tales about the tribulations and triumphs of life as a drag queen are sometimes shocking: Tom’s story of being attacked by a stranger is highly disturbing; his tales of trysts in a Portaloo and sexual experiences that saw them drinking out of toilets are amusing and heartfelt. “This book changed my life. It is the queer bible I’ve always needed,” remarked singer-songwriter Sam Smith.
Sometimes it feels like celebrities come fully formed: Mo Gilligan, in particular, is so naturally funny and charming that it can feel like he was simply born for success. But in this hilarious, often poignant memoir, subtitled Life Stories from Way Back Then , Gilligan opens up about the moments in his life – long before his online comedy videos sprung him to national, then international fame – that made him who he is today. From memories of growing up in South London and his school days to early comedy gigs and learning to cope with fame, Gilligan weaves a heart-warming story of comedy, careers and community.
