British-Ukrainian writer Marina Lewycka has posthumously been named the winner of the Vintage Bollinger prize, a winner-of-winners award marking the 25th anniversary of the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize for comic fiction. The decision to award her the prize was made the day before she died, aged 79, last month following a long illness, said judging chair Peter Florence.

The author won the award for her 2005 novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, a family drama described by Vintage Bollinger judge Claudia Winkleman as “laugh out loud funny, utterly original and also deeply moving”. At the time of publication, the book was longlisted for the Man Booker prize and shortlisted for the Orange prize, now the Women’s prize for fiction.

Lewycka’s partner, Donald Sassoon, and daughter, Sonia Lewycka, accepted the award on the writer’s behalf at a ceremony held in Westminster on Monday evening.

The event also saw Rosanna Pike take home the 2025 award for her novel A Little Trickerie, for which she wins a pig being named after her book, a jeroboam and case of Bollinger Special Cuvée, and the complete set of the Everyman’s Library PG Wodehouse collection.

The novel, described as “lovable, fun and emotionally juicy” by critic Imogen Hermes Gowar in the Guardian, was inspired by a real-life woman: Elizabeth, the “Holy Maid of Leominster,” in Hereford, who supposedly appeared as an angel in the priory there but was found to be a fraud. Pike imagines Elizabeth “with great panache: white-haired adolescent Tibb Ingleby is frankly and unashamedly herself from the first page, dancing and whooping with her mother ‘with a big hoot-hoot’,” wrote Hermes Gowar.

Both Lewycka and Pike’s novels are published by Fig Tree, an imprint of Penguin, in the UK.

Lewycka was named the winner-of-winners from an illustrious alumni list that features Jonathan Coe, Geoff Dyer, Ian McEwan, Terry Pratchett, Helen Fielding, Alexander McCall Smith, Percival Everett and Bob Mortimer among others.

Florence, co-founder of Hay festival, said that while it seemed “daunting” to “garland one book among so many as the funniest book of the last 25 years”, the judges “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.”

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Lewycka died “the day after the jury met to decide the prize winner,” he added. “I am so glad she knew she had won.”

Along with Winkleman and Florence, the judging panel for the Vintage Bollinger included The Great British Sewing Bee judge Patrick Grant, as well as comedians Tatty Macleod and Sindhu Vee. Meanwhile, the 2025 prize was judged by comedian Pippa Evans, novelist Stephanie Merritt, broadcaster James Naughtie, University of Wales vice chair Justin Albert, Everyman’s Library publisher David Campbell, and Florence.

The posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre, one of Jeffrey Epstein’s most prominent accusers, will be published in the autumn, a publisher has announced.

Giuffre had been working on Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice, with the award-winning author and journalist Amy Wallace before her death earlier this year.

The 400-page book will be released on 21 October, according to the Associated Press.

Giuffre, who alleged she had been trafficked for sex to Prince Andrew, had completed the manuscript before she took her own life in April, the publisher Alfred A Knopf said.

Prince Andrew has denied Giuffre’s allegations. In 2022, Giuffre and the prince reached an out-of-court settlement after she sued him for sexual assault.

Knopf’s statement includes an email Giuffre wrote to Wallace 25 days before her death, stating that it was her “heartfelt wish” the memoir be released “regardless” of her circumstances.

“The content of this book is crucial, as it aims to shed light on the systemic failures that allow the trafficking of vulnerable individuals across borders,” the email reads. “It is imperative that the truth is understood and that the issues surrounding this topic are addressed, both for the sake of justice and awareness.”

Giuffre had been hospitalised after a serious accident on 24 March, Knopf said, and sent the email on 1 April. She died on 25 April at her farm in Western Australia, where she had lived for several years.

“In the event of my passing, I would like to ensure that Nobody’s Girl is still released. I believe it has the potential to impact many lives and foster necessary discussions about these grave injustices,” she wrote to Wallace.

Knopf’s statement says the book contains “intimate, disturbing, and heartbreaking new details about her time with Epstein, Maxwell and their many well-known friends, including Prince Andrew, about whom she speaks publicly for the first time since their out-of-court settlement in 2022.”

Knopf editor-in-chief, Jordan Pavlin, said Nobody’s Girl was a “raw and shocking” journey and “the story of a fierce spirit struggling to break free”.

In 2023, the New York Post reported that Giuffre had reached a deal “believed to be worth millions” with an undisclosed publisher.

Knopf spokesperson Todd Doughty told AP that she initially agreed to a seven-figure contract with Penguin Press, but moved with acquiring editor Emily Cunningham after she was hired by Knopf as executive editor last year.

Doughty declined to provide further details about the Epstein associates featured in Nobody’s Girl, but confirmed that Giuffre made “no allegations of abuse against [Donald] Trump”, who continues to face questions about the disgraced financier and his former friend.

Nobody’s Girl is distinct from Giuffre’s unpublished memoir The Billionaire’s Playboy Club, referenced in previous court filings and unsealed in 2019. Through Doughty, Wallace says she began working with Giuffre on a new memoir in spring 2021.

“Nobody’s Girl was both vigorously fact-checked and legally vetted,” a Knopf statement reads.

Giuffre’s co-author on her memoir, Wallace, is an award-winning magazine and newspaper reporter whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.

A representative for Andrew did not immediately return the AP’s request for comment. Buckingham Palace was asked for comment.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press

A memoir by the late Russian politician Alexei Navalny is due to be published this autumn, publisher Penguin Random House (PRH) has announced.

The Russian opposition leader and pro-democracy campaigner began writing his book, titled Patriot, shortly after his poisoning in 2020. He completed it before he died in prison in 2024, dictating some parts.

His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has been working with editors to bring the book to publication. She described it as “a testament not only to Alexei’s life, but to his unwavering commitment to the fight against dictatorship – a fight he gave everything for, including his life.” She hopes that readers will “come to know the man [she] loved deeply – a man of profound integrity and unyielding courage.”

“Sharing his story will not only honour his memory but also inspire others to stand up for what is right and to never lose sight of the values that truly matter”, she added.

Patriot is Navalny’s only memoir, and covers his early life through to his marriage, political career and activism. The book “expresses Navalny’s total conviction that change cannot be resisted and will come”, according to Vintage, the division of PRH that is publishing Patriot in the UK.

“In vivid, page-turning detail, including never-before-seen correspondence from prison, Navalny recounts, among other things … the many attempts on his life, and on the lives of the people closest to him, and the relentless campaign he and his team waged against an increasingly dictatorial regime”, the publisher added.

Navalny, who began his career as a lawyer, went on to become Russia’s most prominent anti-government campaigner and President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic. He was founder of the Anti-Corruption Foundation and was awarded the European Union’s Sakharov prize for “individuals, groups and organisations that have made an outstanding contribution to protecting freedom of thought” in 2021.

In 2013 and 2014 Navalny received suspended sentences for embezzlement, charges he said were fabricated to thwart his political ambitions. He ran in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election and came in second with 27% of the vote but was barred from running in the 2018 presidential election. In August 2020, he was sent to a hospital in Berlin after being poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent. Navalny accused Putin of being responsible for his poisoning.

In 2021, he returned to Russia and was detained on accusations of violating parole conditions while in Germany. In 2022, he was sentenced to nine years in a maximum security penal colony after being found guilty of large-scale fraud and contempt, in a trial described as a sham by Amnesty International. In August 2023, he was sentenced to an additional 19 years in prison. On 16 February 2024, the Russian prison service reported that Navalny had died at the age of 47.

Patriot will be published on 22 October by Vintage in the UK and Knopf in the US.

The posthumous memoir of Lisa Marie Presley written in collaboration with her daughter Riley Keough will be published later this year.

The as yet untitled book about Lisa Marie’s life as the daughter of Elvis will be released by Pan Macmillan on 15 October. Lisa Marie, who died on 12 January last year, had asked Keough to help her finish her memoir, parts of which she had recorded on tape.

According to the publisher, the memoir is composed “mostly” of Lisa Marie’s words, with Keough “filling in the blanks” from her own memory. The book will discuss Lisa Marie’s relationship with Elvis and her mother Priscilla, as well as her marriages to Michael Jackson and Nicolas Cage and the loss of her son, Keough’s brother Benjamin, who killed himself in 2020.

“Few people had the opportunity to know who my mom really was, other than being Elvis’s daughter,” said Keough. “I was lucky to have had that opportunity and working on preparing her autobiography for publication has been a privilege, albeit a bittersweet one.”

Lisa Marie died unexpectedly aged 54 because of a bowel obstruction, which was a complication of bariatric surgery she had several years ago.

Sara Cywinski, publishing director at Pan Macmillan, said she is “glad that there is an opportunity for the world to see Lisa Marie as Riley, and those closest to her, saw her. And, too, for the generations to come to understand the complexity of being a Presley.”

An audiobook of the memoir, read by Keough and including snippets of Lisa Marie’s voice, will be released simultaneously with the print edition.

Lisa Marie was the only child of Elvis and Priscilla, and she was raised in Graceland. She became a singer and released three albums, To Whom It May Concern, Now What, and Storm & Grace. Thirty-four-year-old Keough, the sole trustee of Graceland, is an actor; she starred in Daisy Jones & the Six and Zola among other productions.

“I’m so excited to share my mom now, at her most vulnerable and most honest, and in doing so, I do hope that readers come to love my mom as much as I did,” added Keough.