The Accidental Collector: Winner of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction 2021

Set in the world of contemporary art, Guy Kennaway’s new novel delivers his trademark absurdities and laugh out loud moments.

As the globe’s most successful super-dealer, Herman Gertsch spent his charmed life jettiing between his galleries in Zurich, London and New York, fawned over by artists, curators, politicians and the uber-rich.

As Herman’s empire grew, nothing seemed to get in his way, until he made the calamitous decision to open a gallery in a rural English backwater. Here, Herman encountered John ’Brother’ Burn, a penniless hippy known as the slipperiest man in south Somerset, and therefore the western hemisphere.

In the riotous comedy of errors that follows, Kennaway pours mistaken identity, Amazonian tribesmen, Swiss food, DMT, Arab Royalty, million dollar paintings and worthless tat onto a spin painting of a story that dazzles with surprises and leaves you feeling reassuringly warm about art and life.

Guy Kennaway lives for pleasure, producing books to add to the gaiety of the nation. In all of Kennaway’s work he likes to champion the underdog. He searches out communities under pressure and celebrates their struggles by having a good laugh with them. He is best known for One People about a Jamaican village threatened by mass US tourism, Bird Brain about a community of optimistic pheasants and Time to Go, the funniest book about assisted suicide ever.