Women's Prize winners and shortlisted books

The Women's Prize for Fiction, founded in 1996, is awarded each year to a full-length novel written in English by a woman and published in the UK. Its sister prize, the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, was first awarded in 2024 for narrative non-fiction by women.

This collection brings together 21 winners and shortlisted books, including the 2025 winner The Safekeep, the 2020 winner Hamnet and the first Non-Fiction winner, Doppelganger.

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Every book below won or was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction or the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction, checked against the published prize lists. Each entry says what the book is about and who it suits.

Women's Prize for Fiction winners

  • The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden (2025). Suits readers of Patricia Highsmith and Sarah Waters, as the publisher suggests. Fifteen years after the Second World War, Isabel's strict, solitary routine is upended when her brother leaves his new girlfriend, Eva, to stay for the season.
  • Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan (2024). Suits readers of historical fiction about families and war. Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor, but over a decade of civil war in Jaffna she watches her four brothers and their friend drawn into violent politics.
  • Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver (2023). Suits readers of coming-of-age novels: it follows Demon from his birth to a single mother in a trailer in the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, where poverty is part of everyday life.
  • Piranesi by Susanna Clarke (2021). Suits readers who like a puzzle: Piranesi records the halls, statues and tides of the House in his notebooks until chalked messages show that someone new has arrived. By the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
  • Hamnet by Maggie O'Farrell (2020). Suits readers of historical fiction: set in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1596, it is a novel inspired by a famous playwright's son, whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written. Also stocked in the film tie-in edition.
  • The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2012, as the Orange Prize for Fiction). Suits readers who want Greek myth retold as a love story: it follows Patroclus, an exiled prince, and his bond with Achilles, from the court of King Peleus to the war at Troy.

Women's Prize for Fiction shortlisted books

2025 shortlist

  • Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis. Suits readers who like comic novels about serious subjects. Nadia, an academic, takes a UN job in Iraq rehabilitating women who joined ISIS, and befriends Sara, an East Londoner who joined at fifteen.
  • Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout. Suits readers who know Strout's Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge books. In Crosby, Maine, the lawyer Bob Burgess defends a man accused of killing his mother, while Lucy and Olive trade stories about people they have known.
  • The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji. Suits readers of multi-generational family novels: five women of the Valiat family, split between Tehran and America, face long-held secrets after a holiday goes wrong and Shirin is arrested.

2023 shortlist

  • Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris. Suits readers of fiction rooted in real events: the novel draws on real-life accounts of the Siege of Sarajevo.
  • Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks. Suits readers interested in music and club culture: Yamaye lives for weekends at an underground club on the outskirts of London, and after her relationship with Moose is cut short her life takes her to Jamaica.
  • The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O'Farrell. Suits readers of historical fiction set in Renaissance Italy: in 1561, sixteen-year-old Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, realises during a visit to a remote villa that her husband Alfonso intends to kill her.
  • Trespasses by Louise Kennedy. Suits readers of love stories set against political violence. Cushla, a teacher, falls in love with Michael, a married man from Belfast she meets in her family's pub, while the news brings car bombs and killings.

2022 shortlist

  • The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak. Suits readers of family stories that span generations. In 1974 two teenagers from opposite sides of a divided Cyprus meet in secret; decades later, in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada tries to understand her family's silence about the island.
  • The Sentence by Louise Erdrich. Suits readers who enjoy novels set in bookshops: Tookie, who began selling books after years in prison, works in a Minneapolis bookstore haunted by its most annoying customer from November 2019 to November 2020.

2020 shortlist

  • A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes. Suits readers of The Song of Achilles and The Silence of the Girls, as the publisher suggests: classicist Natalie Haynes retells the Trojan War through the women, girls and goddesses caught up in it.

2019 shortlist

  • Circe by Madeline Miller. Suits readers who enjoyed The Song of Achilles: Circe, daughter of the sun god Helios, is banished to the island of Aiaia, where she practises witchcraft and meets Odysseus. This is the fifth-anniversary edition with a new foreword by the author.
  • My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Suits crime readers who like a family story at the centre: Korede, a nurse in Nigeria, keeps cleaning up after her sister Ayoola's killings, until Ayoola starts dating the doctor Korede loves.

2016 shortlist

  • A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara. Suits readers ready for an intense novel about friendship: four college friends make their lives in New York over several decades, centred on Jude, a litigator whose mind and body are scarred by his childhood.

Women's Prize for Non-Fiction

  • Doppelganger by Naomi Klein (winner, 2024). Suits readers trying to make sense of online conspiracy culture: after being repeatedly mistaken for another woman with the same first name, Klein follows her double into a 'mirror world' of conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine politics.
  • Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (shortlisted, 2025). Suits readers of nature memoir: Chloe Dalton, a city professional, finds a newborn hare alone in the countryside and raises it, and the book follows their relationship over the following years. Also stocked in hardback.

Questions people ask

What is the Women's Prize for Fiction?

It is an annual prize, founded in 1996, for full-length novels written in English by women and published in the UK. One novel is chosen as the winner each year.

Is there a Women's Prize for non-fiction?

Yes. The Women's Prize for Non-Fiction celebrates narrative non-fiction by women writing in English and published in the UK. Its first longlist was announced in 2024, and Naomi Klein's Doppelganger was the first winner.

Why does The Song of Achilles say Orange Prize?

It won in 2012, when the prize was called the Orange Prize for Fiction. The Women's Prize lists it among its previous winners.

How are the books chosen?

Each year a panel of five women judges the entries submitted by UK publishers and picks a longlist, a shortlist and a winner, judged on excellence, originality and accessibility.

Selected by Fox & Fable from books in stock. Last updated 30 September 2026.