TWO Irish authors have been named in a six-strong shortlist for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Fiction.
Anne Enright’s 2023 novel The Wren, The Wren has made the cut, alongside Claire Kilroy’s Soldier Sailor, which was also published last year.
The pair go up against V. V. Ganeshanantha for Brotherless Night, Kate Grenville for Restless Dolly Maunder, Isabella Hammad for Enter Ghost and Aube Rey Lescure for River East, River West.
“This year’s shortlist features six brilliant, thought-provoking and spellbinding novels that between them capture an enormous breadth of the human experience,” chair of the judges panel, Monica Ali said this week.
“Readers will be captivated by the characters, the luminous writing and the exquisite storytelling,” she added.
“Each book is gloriously compelling and inventive and lingers in the heart and mind long after the final page.”
Judges Indira Varma, Anna Whitehouse, Monica Ali, Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ and Laura Dockrill Many of the books in the shortlist feature “characters who are navigating seismic changes in their identity or undergoing a process of self-reckoning and self-acceptance”, while several also deal with the “inheritance of trauma and the resilience of women in overcoming the weight of the past” a Women’s Prize Trust representative explained.
The Women’s Prize for Fiction 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 and the ‘Bessie’, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven.
Ali is joined on the judging panel by author Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀; author and illustrator Laura Dockrill; actor Indira Varma and presenter and author Anna Whitehouse.
The winner will be announced on June 13.
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