Women’s Prize for Fiction announces ‘wonderfully diverse’ shortlist

Winner will be announced in June

(Women’s Prize for Fiction)

The shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced.

In its 27th year, the literary prize aims to honour “outstanding, ambitious, original fiction written in English by women anywhere in the world”.

Six countries are represented on this year’s shortlist, with Turkish-British author Elif Shafak among them.

Lisa Allen Agostini, Louise Erdich, Meg Mason, Ruth Ozeki, and Maggie Shipstead have also made it onto the list.

This year’s selection was chosen by chair of judges Mary Ann Sieghart and her judging panel: Lorraine Candy, Dorothy Koomson, Anita Sethi, and Pandora Sykes.

The six novels explore a range of themes including “belonging and identity; the power of nature; the burden of history; personal freedom; sisterhood; mental illness; ghosts; gender violence; and the opportunity for renewal”.

Their settings range between Hollywood, Antarctica, Montana, Cyprus, Trinidad, London, and Minneapolois.

Allen-Agostini’s The Bread the Devil Knead is the only debut novel on the list.

None of the selected authors have previously been shortlisted for the prize, although Shafak was longlisted twice, in 2008 and 2013.

Turkish-British novelist Elif Shafak has made it on to the long list twice before (Ferhat Elik)

“We were blessed with an extraordinarily high quality of submissions this year, which made whittling down the longlist from 16 to six particularly difficult,” said Sieghart, adding that she was pleased by how “wonderfully diverse” the shortlist turned out to be.

She concluded: “Our only problem now will be to identify the winner out of these six brilliant novels.”

The winner will be announced on 15 June 2022 at an awards ceremony in London. The chosen author will receive an anonymously endowed cheque for £30,000, as well as a bronze award known as a “Bessie”, which is created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.

Full list of authors and books below:

Lisa Allen-Agostini, The Bread the Devil Knead

Louise Erdich, The Sentence

Meg Mason, Sorrow and Bliss

Ruth Ozeki, The Book of Form and Emptiness

Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees

Maggie Shipstead, Great Circle