Overview

Women's Prize for Fiction 2024

The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the greatest celebration of female creativity in the world.

The winner of the 29th Women’s Prize for Fiction is Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan.

The judging panel for the 2024 Prize is chaired by author Monica Ali. She is joined by author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀; author and illustrator Laura Dockrill; actor Indira Varma; and presenter and author Anna Whitehouse.

Winner

Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan

Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan is the 29th winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. This beautifully written story follows Sashi, a sixteen-year-old aspiring doctor, growing up in Jaffna in the 1980s. Her close family is torn apart by the onset of civil war. Brotherless Night vividly and compassionately centres itself around erased and marginalised stories – Tamil women, students, teachers, ordinary civilians – exploring the moral nuances of violence and terrorism against a backdrop of oppression and exile.

Brotherless Night

The 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction shortlist

The 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction longlist

Prize Overview

The Women’s Prize for Fiction is one of the most successful, influential and popular literary prizes in the world, championing and amplifying women’s voices and nurturing a global community of readers.

The Prize was established in 1996 to highlight and remedy the imbalance in coverage, respect and reverence given to women writers versus their male peers, creating a platform for exceptional writing by women to shine.

The Prize is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK. The winner receives £30,000, anonymously endowed, and the ‘Bessie’, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven.

Judging Process

Every year, a panel of five women, all passionate readers and at the top of their respective professions, choose the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction.

The whole process starts in the summer of the previous year, when we invite UK publishers to submit eligible books.

Judges plunge immediately into reading their allocated books, basing their deliberations for the longlist, shortlist and winner on three core tenets, which have remained the same since the Prize was founded: excellence, originality and accessibility.

Previous Winners

2023: Demon Copperhead
Barbara Kingsolver

2022: The Book of Form & Emptiness
Ruth Ozeki

2021: Piranesi
Susannah Clarke

2020:Hamnet
Maggie O’ Farrell

Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist Announced 5 March 2024
Women's Prize for Fiction Shortlist Announced 24 April 2024
Women's Prize for Fiction Winner Announced 13 June 2024
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