Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025 Longlist

This bold debut centers on Isabel, a reclusive woman in 1961 Netherlands, and Eva, her sister’s girlfriend, who moves into her home for the summer. As intimacy develops against a backdrop of war’s lingering trauma, the novel becomes an erotic, psychological, and historical reckoning. Yael van der Wouden masterfully interweaves queerness, intergenerational memory, and small‑town detail. Critics praised its emotional heft, tightly‑plotted tension, and literary audacity. Winner of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction, it stands as both unsettling and deeply resonant.

Elizabeth Strout returns to her small‑town universe with intertwined stories of Bob Burgess, Olive Kitteridge (now aged 90), and Lucy Barton. A murder case forces Bob to confront his past as friends and neighbors circle closer. Strout’s prose is quiet yet truthful, musing on aging, trauma, friendship and resilience. She blends emotional insight with elegiac humor across connected voices. The novel navigates familial secrets, grief and the pandemic’s aftermath with empathy. Judges commended its emotional clarity and cumulative richness.

Lucy Steeds’s novel The Artist is a layered narrative exploring creativity, authenticity and the cost of ambition in contemporary art. It follows a visually gifted protagonist whose career becomes entwined with ethical compromise and emotional fragmentation. Steeds presents art-world power dynamics, class intersection, and creative integrity with sharp social observation and subtle satire. Through vivid characterization and intimate vignettes, readers navigate aesthetic dilemmas and personal longing. Though still fresh from the longlist, early responses praise its incisive prose and perceptive exploration of artistic identity. A novel that reflects on creation as both vocation and mirror to societal values.

Miranda July’s wildly inventive novel follows a midlife artist who abandons her family road trip to bunk in a roadside motel. She reinvents herself over nocturnal encounters, exploring aging desire, freedom and selfhood. With playful surrealism and emotional frankness, July confronts the politics of midlife femininity. Readers and critics celebrated its dark humor, erotic intensity, and radical form. Though it didn’t win, many saw it as the most daring book of the shortlist for its boundary-pushing portrayal of female reinvention in midlife.

Saraid de Silva’s debut novel Amma unfolds across three generations of Sri Lankan‑Pākehā women, tracing diaspora, trauma and resilience from Singapore to New Zealand and London. The narrative moves gracefully across decades, capturing varied registers of voice and the specifics of immigrant identity. The prose is rich and vivid yet never weighed down by its thematic ambition, recalling Arundhati Roy’s elegance in scope. De Silva foregrounds female solidarity, silences and the long shadows of familial violence. Readers and critics praised its emotional clarity, lush style and deft handling of intergenerational storytelling. The result is a powerful meditation on belonging, survival and reclaiming selfhood. Amma is both heartbreakingly intimate and politically astute.

Nesting is an intimate exploration of home, motherhood and yearning. O’Donnell’s debut follows a woman seeking stability in a chaotic inner life marked by loss, care duties and gentle longing. Through quiet prose and domestic moments, the novel charts the contradictions of nurturing others while feeling untethered herself. Observations of anxiety, routine, and emotional dislocation are rendered with tenderness and precision. The story subtly builds toward reckoning as unresolved grief and unmet expectations surface. Critics highlighted its emotional intimacy and understated resonance. A graceful, introspective work about the tension between rootedness and restlessness.

Kaliane Bradley’s debut is a genre‑blending gem mixing time‑travel sci‑fi, romance and political reflection. We follow an unnamed ‘bridge’ in modern Britain assigned to help Commander Graham Gore, a Victorian Arctic explorer resurrected into the present. The relationship blossoms with wit and emotional tension, while the sci‑fi conceit also probes empire, migration and climate aftermath. Bradley’s prose is tidy, witty and driven by character—dramatic reveals and bureaucratic absurdity collide in service of deeper meditations. Critics applauded it as a ‘fun and thoughtful’ debut, though some noted uneven pacing between the slow build and thriller finale. It was described by Literary Review as “the loudest debut of the year”. For fans of smart speculative romance steeped in cultural reflection, this novel delivers.

Aria Aber’s debut follows a young Norwegian‑Afghan woman navigating trauma, family expectation, artistic ambition and racial identity. The novel intersperses past life in Kabul with contemporary life in Oslo, creating a fractured portrait of belonging and dissidence. Aber interrogates the ‘good girl’ trope through lyrical, sharp prose and self‑aware narrative voice. Themes of diaspora, patriarchy and creative impulse pulse through an interior journey toward agency and self‑definition. Critics singled out its emotional force and stylish voice. A fierce, unsparing portrait of coming of age across fractured worlds.

Rosanna Pike’s novel toggles between wartime Ireland and contemporary London as it traces a love story intertwined with craft, memory and quiet obsession. The narrative is anchored by lyrical descriptions of lace-making and inheritance—both literal and emotional. Pike reveals layered characters who carry old wounds and longing across generations. Scenes pulse with elegiac detail as past and present mirror and diverge. Critics praised its poetic structure and emotional subtlety. A dreamy, reflective narrative exploring creativity, loss and connection between worlds.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Dream Count unfolds in melodic prose, tracing characters shaped by history, loss and longing across continents. She reflects on grief, lineage and cultural rupture through voices that shimmer with interior depth. The narrative interweaves past and present with moral clarity and pastoral imagery. While less internationally celebrated than her previous works, this book sustains her trademark empathy and thematic ambition. Critics noted its elegiac tone and quietly powerful emotional resonance. An intimate, thoughtful meditation on inheritance, desire and memory.

Sanam Mahloudji’s multigenerational saga bridges Iran and Britain to explore migration, memory and familial complexity. The novel centers on a Persian family grappling with diasporic grief and longing for cultural continuity. Mahloudji renders family rituals, political rupture and intergenerational silence with empathy and care. Characters are portrayed in rich psychological detail, haunted by history yet longing for reconciliation. The narrative flows with meditative pacing and emotional nuance. A deeply felt story of identity, belonging and the ties that bind across borders.

Karen Jennings’s debut Crooked Seeds is a poetic novel set in South African landscapes scarred by history and emotional upheaval. The narrative unfolds in fragments, weaving voices that speak of land, loss and survival in the wake of racial injustice. Jennings explores how personal and collective trauma take root and bloom across generations. Her prose is spare yet evocative—haunting in its quiet intensity. Critics welcomed it as a powerful debut offering both lyricism and political urgency. A novel that haunts and lingers with moral clarity and emotional ache.

Nussaibah Younis’s debut novel is a sharp, irreverent critique of academia, radical politics and personal faith. Set between London and the Middle East, the narrative grapples with ideology, love, and self‑deconstruction. The protagonist questions her beliefs and identity while navigating intellectual ambition and emotional rupture. Younis combines satirical wit with psychological insight, exploring the limits of solidarity and individual agency. Critics praised its tension between political urgency and personal unease. A stylish and subversive portrait of belief, desire and reform in a borderless world.

Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel interlaces the stories of guests at a Moroccan hotel, each arriving with secrets, grief or hope. The novel merges magical realism and social commentary, charting the intersection of personal dream and national history. Lalami illuminates migration, memory, and hospitality as metaphor and reality. Her prose is atmospheric and empathetic, rooted in Moroccan landscape and cosmopolitan tensions. Critics noted its ambitious structure and emotional clarity amid speculative threads. A novel that dreams collectively while resisting erasure and displacement.

Birding follows a middle-aged woman recovering from trauma in a bleak coastal town as she seeks solace in the rhythms of birdwatching. Through sparse and atmospheric prose, Ruane evokes healing through nature and the small details of observation. The narrative gently unfolds emotional repair, self-awareness and the quiet rituals that stitch life back together. Critics described it as haunting yet quietly hopeful. It addresses loss, isolation and recovery without sentimentality. A gentle, meditative novel about finding refuge in seasonal life and renewal.

Jenni Daiches delivers a gentle yet poignant exploration of Jewish diaspora, memory and evolving identity across three generations. The novel follows emigrant lives from Eastern Europe to Britain, weaving heritage and home through intimate recollections. Daiches captures the tension between belonging and alienation through reflective, restrained prose. The characters’ chamber of voices—grandmother, mother, child—evoke both continuity and rupture. Critics praised its quiet emotional charge and elegant restraint. A story about roots, dislocation and the ties that outlast borders and time.