Women's Prize for Fiction
Discover the latest from the Women's Prize for Fiction including updates for 2022 and winners from previous years.Women's Prize for Fiction 2022
Discover more about this year's prize.Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022
In an extraordinary year for fiction written by women, and from an incredibly strong shortlist, we were thrilled to choose Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness, which stood out for its sparkling writing, warmth, intelligence, humour and poignancy. A celebration of the power of books and reading, it tackles big issues of life and death, and is a complete joy to read. Ruth Ozeki is a truly original and masterful storyteller.
- Mary Ann Sieghart, 2022 Chair of Judges.
The 2022 shortlist
The Sentence
Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich shares a wickedly funny ghost story set in a small book shop in Minneapolis.
Sorrow and Bliss
Meg Mason's novel of modern love, mental illness and starting again is spiky, sharp and told with heart-breaking tenderness.
The Book of Form and Emptiness
Blending unforgettable characters, riveting plot and engagement on themes from neurodiversity to climate change, Ruth Ozeki's novel is bold and heartbreaking.
The Island of Missing Trees
A rich, magical tale of belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted Elif Shafak.
Great Circle
With unforgettable characters and thrilling suspense, Maggie Shipstead's novel is a sweeping story of loss and obsession, sacrifice and survival.
The Bread the Devil Knead
An engrossing debut novel, Trinidadian writer and comedian Lisa Allen-Agostini's page-turner explores themes of violence, racism and liberation.
The 2022 longlist
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Careless
- By: Kirsty Capes
- Narrated by: Amber Gadd
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
At 3.04 p.m. on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out she's pregnant. She could tell her social worker Henry, but he's useless. She should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won't understand. She really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn't spoken to him in weeks. Bess knows more than anyone that love doesn't come without conditions. But this isn't a love story.
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Unmissable read
- By Sarah on 04-06-21
By: Kirsty Capes
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The Paper Palace
- By: Miranda Cowley Heller
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
On a perfect August morning, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the pond below 'The Paper Palace'—her family's holiday home in Cape Cod. As she dives beneath the water she relives the passionate encounter she had the night before, against the side of the house that knows all her darkest secrets, while her husband and mother chatted to their guests inside.... So begins a story that unfolds over 24 hours and 50 years, as Elle's shocking betrayal leads her to a life-changing decision—and an ending you won't be able to stop thinking about.
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Don’t waste your life
- By S. Maguire on 10-08-21
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Flamingo
- By: Rachel Elliott
- Narrated by: Lucy Paterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
First, there were the flamingos. And then there were two families. Sherry and Leslie and their daughters, Rae and Pauline - and Eve and her son, Daniel. Sherry loves her husband, Leslie. She also loves Eve. It couldn't have been a happier summer. But then Eve left, and everything went grey. Now Daniel is all grown up and broken. And when he turns up at Sherry's door, it's almost as if they've all come home again. But there's still one missing. Where is Eve? And what, exactly, is her story?
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Flamboyance
- By Amazon Customer on 22-04-22
By: Rachel Elliott
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The Sentence
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading 'with murderous attention', must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation and furious reckoning.
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Ghostly truths
- By Amazon Customer on 27-03-22
By: Louise Erdrich
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Sorrow and Bliss
- By: Meg Mason
- Narrated by: Emilia Fox
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave? Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe - as she has long believed - there is something wrong with her.
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depressing and pointless
- By Anonymous User on 23-10-21
By: Meg Mason
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The Exhibitionist
- By: Charlotte Mendelson
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art—the first in many decades—and one he is sure will burnish his reputation for good. His three children will be there: beautiful Leah, always her father’s biggest champion; sensitive Patrick, who has finally decided to strike out on his own; and insecure Jess, the youngest, who has her own momentous decision to make.
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Grotesque, unbelievable main characters
- By Jeannivista on 21-05-22
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Careless
- By: Kirsty Capes
- Narrated by: Amber Gadd
- Length: 9 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At 3.04 p.m. on a hot, sticky day in June, Bess finds out she's pregnant. She could tell her social worker Henry, but he's useless. She should tell her foster mother, Lisa, but she won't understand. She really ought to tell Boy, but she hasn't spoken to him in weeks. Bess knows more than anyone that love doesn't come without conditions. But this isn't a love story.
-
-
Unmissable read
- By Sarah on 04-06-21
By: Kirsty Capes
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The Paper Palace
- By: Miranda Cowley Heller
- Narrated by: Laurel Lefkow
- Length: 11 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
On a perfect August morning, Elle Bishop heads out for a swim in the pond below 'The Paper Palace'—her family's holiday home in Cape Cod. As she dives beneath the water she relives the passionate encounter she had the night before, against the side of the house that knows all her darkest secrets, while her husband and mother chatted to their guests inside.... So begins a story that unfolds over 24 hours and 50 years, as Elle's shocking betrayal leads her to a life-changing decision—and an ending you won't be able to stop thinking about.
-
-
Don’t waste your life
- By S. Maguire on 10-08-21
-
Flamingo
- By: Rachel Elliott
- Narrated by: Lucy Paterson
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
First, there were the flamingos. And then there were two families. Sherry and Leslie and their daughters, Rae and Pauline - and Eve and her son, Daniel. Sherry loves her husband, Leslie. She also loves Eve. It couldn't have been a happier summer. But then Eve left, and everything went grey. Now Daniel is all grown up and broken. And when he turns up at Sherry's door, it's almost as if they've all come home again. But there's still one missing. Where is Eve? And what, exactly, is her story?
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Flamboyance
- By Amazon Customer on 22-04-22
By: Rachel Elliott
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The Sentence
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Louise Erdrich
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store's most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls' Day, but she simply won't leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading 'with murderous attention', must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation and furious reckoning.
-
-
Ghostly truths
- By Amazon Customer on 27-03-22
By: Louise Erdrich
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Sorrow and Bliss
- By: Meg Mason
- Narrated by: Emilia Fox
- Length: 10 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave? Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe - as she has long believed - there is something wrong with her.
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-
depressing and pointless
- By Anonymous User on 23-10-21
By: Meg Mason
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The Exhibitionist
- By: Charlotte Mendelson
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 9 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Meet the Hanrahan family, gathering for a momentous weekend as famous artist and notorious egoist Ray Hanrahan prepares for a new exhibition of his art—the first in many decades—and one he is sure will burnish his reputation for good. His three children will be there: beautiful Leah, always her father’s biggest champion; sensitive Patrick, who has finally decided to strike out on his own; and insecure Jess, the youngest, who has her own momentous decision to make.
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Grotesque, unbelievable main characters
- By Jeannivista on 21-05-22
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The Book of Form and Emptiness
- By: Ruth Ozeki
- Narrated by: Kerry Shale, Ruth Ozeki
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
After the tragic death of his beloved musician father, 14-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house - a sneaker, a broken Christmas ornament, a piece of wilted lettuce. Although Benny doesn't understand what these things are saying, he can sense their emotional tone; some are pleasant, a gentle hum or coo, but others are snide, angry and full of pain. When his mother develops a hoarding problem, the voices grow more clamorous.
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Definitely a slow burner
- By TheRealMrsB on 06-04-22
By: Ruth Ozeki
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This One Sky Day
- By: Leone Ross
- Narrated by: Leone Ross
- Length: 13 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Dawn breaks across the archipelago of Popisho. The world is stirring awake again, each resident with their own list of things to do: a wedding feast to conjure and cook, an infidelity to investigate, a lost soul to set free. As the sun rises, two star-crossed lovers try to find their way back to one another across this single day. When night falls, all have been given a gift and many are no longer the same. The sky is pink, and some wonder if it will ever be blue again.
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Mind-blowing... In the best ways.
- By Malc Wells on 15-12-21
By: Leone Ross
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The Island of Missing Trees
- By: Elif Shafak
- Narrated by: Daphne Kouma, Amira Ghazalla
- Length: 11 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. The taverna is the only place that Kostas and Defne can meet in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic and chilli peppers, creeping honeysuckle, and in the centre, growing through a cavity in the roof, a fig tree. The fig tree witnesses their hushed, happy meetings; their silent, surreptitious departures. The fig tree is there, too, when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, when the teenagers vanish.
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Narrators are horrible
- By idyll on 16-08-21
By: Elif Shafak
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Great Circle
- By: Maggie Shipstead
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Alex McKenna
- Length: 25 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
From the night she is rescued as a baby out of the flames of a sinking ship, to the day she joins a pair of daredevil pilots looping and diving over the rugged forests of her childhood, to the thrill of flying Spitfires during the war, the life of Marian Graves has always been marked by a lust for freedom and danger. In 1950, she embarks on her life's dream - to fly a Great Circle around the globe, pole to pole. But after a crash landing, she finds herself stranded on the Antarctic ice without enough fuel.
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A book that I didn't want to end
- By Reader on 31-12-21
By: Maggie Shipstead
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The Final Revival of Opal & Nev
- By: Dawnie Walton
- Narrated by: Priya Ayyar, Matthew Lloyd Davies, David Sadzin, and others
- Length: 13 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A queen of punk before her time. A duo on the brink of stardom. A night that will define their story for ever. Opal is a fiercely independent young woman pushing against the grain in her style and attitude, a Black punk artist before her time. Despite her unconventional looks, Opal believes she can be a star. So when the aspiring British singer/songwriter Neville Charles discovers her one night, she takes him up on his offer to make rock music together.
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Boring
- By SnapDragon on 08-02-24
By: Dawnie Walton
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Creatures of Passage
- By: Morowa Yejidé
- Narrated by: Morowa Yejidé
- Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Nephthys Kinwell is a taxi driver of sorts in Washington, DC, ferrying passengers in a 1967 Plymouth Belvedere with a ghost in the trunk. Endless rides and alcohol help her manage her grief over the death of her twin brother, Osiris, who was murdered and dumped in the Anacostia River. Unknown to Nephthys when the novel opens in 1977, her estranged great-nephew, 10-year-old Dash, is finding himself drawn to the banks of that very same river. It is there that Dash has charmed conversations with a mysterious figure he calls the "River Man".
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Special book
- By Amazon Customer on 24-04-22
By: Morowa Yejidé
Meet the judges
Mary Ann Sieghart - Chair
A journalist, broadcaster, and author of the bestselling book, The Authority Gap: Why We Still Take Women Less Seriously Than Men, and What We Can Do About It, Mary Ann Sieghart worked at The Times for nearly twenty years, as Assistant Editor, Comment Editor, Arts Editor and political columnist, and has also worked at the FT, The Economist and The Independent. Mary Ann presents programmes on BBC Radio 4 and BBC World Service and has frequently appeared on Question Time, Any Questions, Newsnight, The Andrew Marr Show, The Today Programme and Woman’s Hour.
She has been a Visiting Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and is currently a Visiting Professor at King’s College London. She chaired the Social Market Foundation think tank and is a director of The Scott Trust. She is senior trustee of the Kennedy Memorial Trust and has sat on the boards of Tate Modern, Ofcom’s Content Board, the Heritage Lottery Fund and three large FTSE-quoted investment trusts.
Lorraine Candy
An award-winning journalist and editor, Lorraine Candy is the former editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan, ELLE, and most recently Sunday Times Style. She began her career on The Cornish Times before going on to become Woman's Editor at The Sun and then Features Editor at The Times. Her first book, Mum What's Wrong With You: 101 Things Only the Mothers of Teenage Girls Know, is a Sunday Times Top 10 bestseller. A mum of four she has over a decade of experience writing about parenting in national publications, including columns with the Sunday Times Magazine and Femail in the Daily Mail. She also writes for the monthly and weekly fashion and beauty magazines.
Lorraine is co-host of the chart-topping lifestyle podcast Postcards from Midlife. She is on the advisory board at Tate Modern and on the Tate gallery membership council. Lorraine is a champion of educating young girls, working on the media advisory board of the global charity Their World. She's also an ambassador for the charity Women In Sport and the newly launched Menopause Charity.
Dorothy Koomson
Dorothy Koomson is an award-winning, global bestselling author and journalist whose books have been translated into more than 30 languages, with sales that exceed two million copies in the UK alone.
Dorothy was featured on the 2021 Powerlist as one of the most influential Black people in Britain and appeared in GQ Style as a Black British trailblazer. Dorothy uses her platform to support new writers and hosts The Happy Author podcast. Her latest book, the Sunday Times Bestseller, I Know What You’ve Done, is published by Headline.
Anita Sethi
Anita Sethi was born in Manchester and is author of the acclaimed new book, I Belong Here: a Journey Along the Backbone of Britain. I Belong Here has been described as 'a magnificent and redemptive achievement' by The Bookseller, 'a memoir of rare power' by The Guardian, and 'an amazing odyssey: inspiring, powerful, encouraging and incredibly brave' by The Independent. I Belong Here was nominated for the Wainwright Prize for UK Nature Writing, Portico Prize, and Books Are My Bag Readers Awards, among others.
Her writing has also appeared in anthologies including Women on Nature, The Wild Isles, Seasons and Common People. She has written for The Guardian, Observer, iNews, The Sunday Times, Daily Telegraph, Vogue, TLS, and BBC Wildlife among others and appeared on various BBC radio programmes. A literary activist and campaigner, she has set up the I Belong Here foundation.
Pandora Sykes
A journalist and broadcaster Pandora Sykes has written for The Sunday Times, The Guardian, ELLE, Vogue, GQ and Grazia. She is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling essay collection, How Do We Know We're Doing It Right? and is the creator of numerous Top 10 podcasts including The High Low, Doing It Right, The Missing and the BBC Radio 4 audio documentary, Pieces of Britney.
A keen reader, she has interviewed authors including David Nicholls, Reni Eddo-Lodge, Graham Norton, Leili Slimani and Bernardine Evaristo and voiced several audio books, for Jilly Cooper among others.