Matthew Dooley won the Observer’s short graphic story award in 2016 but had his first graphic novel, Flake, published by Jonathan Cape earlier this year.
The book tells the tale of Howard, who inherited his father’s ice cream van and operates out of the small (fictional) seaside town of Dobbiston. However, when trade takes a turn for the worse, he realises there’s an ice cream turf war to be waged, made even worse by the fact that his rival turns out to be his half brother.
Flake is now also the first graphic novel to win the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse prize, which is awarded annually to a humorous book that’s judged to be comedic in the spirit of PG Wodehouse.