The 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction Shortlist

I have a complicated relationship with the concept of ‘women’s fiction.’ I, a woman, read a great deal of fiction, much of which is written by women but not all of which would be positioned on that shelf in a bookshop. What could women’s fiction be, I wonder? What marks a female narrative apart, beyond the cover art? It’s a mutable concept—and an alienating one too, I think, for us women who do not appreciate the distinction. But I have fewer qualms about the concept of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, an annual British literary award that seeks to highlight the best new novels by (all) women writers.

The creation of the prize was not without controversy—A.S. Byatt, for example, famously refused to allow her books to be entered, feeling it to be a “sexist” idea, that assumed the existence of “feminine subject matter.” However, it is true that—despite women both publishing and reading more books than men—men far are less likely to read books by women, books by women are less likely to be reviewed in mainstream outlets, and books written from the point of view of women or featuring female protagonists are far less likely to receive literary awards. Research in the UK suggests a disparity of more than 40% between the average earnings of male and female writers. The prize was originally founded in response to the 1991 Booker Prize shortlist, which featured no books by women although 60% of the novels published that year had been written by female authors.

Given the multitude of literary prizes whose entries are restricted to specific demographic categories (Pulitzers, for example, are restricted to writers who are American citizens, while there are countless prizes targeted at specific age groups) it does not feel entirely outlandish for a prize to be limited to female or female-identifying writers. Certainly, despite Byatt’s fears of being tarred by inclusion on such a list, the prize has become one of the UK’s most agenda-setting literary awards; shortlisted titles can expect a big bounce in publicity and sales, and far greater visibility in bookshops. Previous winners include such modern classics as Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, Eimear McBride’s A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing, and Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin. Last year the £30,000 prize was won by Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form & Emptiness.

In 2023, the Woman’s Prize for Fiction shortlist comprises six books, placing novels by first-time authors head-to-head with work by big hitters like Barbara Kingsolver and Maggie O’Farrell.

Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris

Morris’s debut novel is set during the Siege of Sarajevo—a four-year ordeal in which the city’s residents were trapped in their homes without heating, power, or clean water, and subjected to daily shelling and sniper fire. She told The Irish Times that it was partly based on the experiences of her mother’s family, and that she and her sisters had spent the war in London, “watch[ing] the news anxiously each night, scanning faces for a glimpse of a relative.” Black Butterflies, whose title references the ash that would flutter down over the city, follows the painter and art teacher Zora who has refused to leave the city as she adapts to this harrowing new normal. It’s been shortlisted for a number of other prizes, including the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize (for ‘evoking the spirit of a place’) and the Author’s Club award for first novels. It will suit fans of humane and literary war novels, such as Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver

A daring reimagining of the David Copperfield story, transposed to an opioid-ravaged Appalachia, from the author of The Poisonwood Bible and Flight Behaviour. It is, declares Elizabeth Lowry in The Guardian,  a “ferocious critique of institutional poverty and its damaging effects on children” and the book Kingsolver “was born to write.” Damon Fields, nicknamed ‘Demon,’ was born to a drug-addicted young mother in a Virginia trailer park, then orphaned and passed from home to home. The Dickensian plot transfers remarkably well to contemporary America—worryingly so—and Kingsolver’s Demon speaks with a verve and intensity that is difficult to put down. Demon Copperhead has found both critical and commercial success, having won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and been selected for Oprah’s Book Club.

The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

O’Farrell’s eagerly anticipated follow-up to Hamnet (which won the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2020) is based on a scandalous real-life story from Renaissance Italy. Young aristocrat Lucrezia de’ Medici was married off at 15 to the much older Duke of Ferrara. The match was brief and unhappy. When the duchess died less than two years later, there were strong suggestions that she had been poisoned on the orders of her powerful husband. O’Farrell’s novel is richly atmospheric and deeply researched, although she has altered some historical details for narrative effect. It met with a somewhat mixed critical reception on publication but has found a wide and largely appreciative fan base. If you enjoy lushly descriptive historical fiction, this will be the book for you.

Pod by Laline Paull

This novel is written from the points of view of marine creatures, including a spinner dolphin living mutely among bottlenose dolphins, and a parasitic remora fish. But don’t get the wrong idea—this is not Finding Nemo; there are graphic scenes of (species-appropriate) rape and environmental disaster, so come prepared. Pod takes an unflinching look at human impacts on the underwater world, seen from below the surface, just as Paull’s earlier book, The Bees (also shortlisted for the Women’s Prize, back in 2015), offered an insider’s view of the succession scandals within the alien—one might even say dystopian—culture of a honeybee hive. It’s creative, challenging, and quite literally immersive. One for open-minded readers with an interest in animal behaviour and writing from unusual perspectives.

Fire Rush by Jacqueline Crooks

The fifth book on the 2023 Women’s Prize shortlist is Jacqueline Crooks’ Fire Rush, another debut that made a huge splash on arrival. Fire Rush is set between London, Bristol, and Jamaica in the late 1970s and early 1980s, is written partly in patois, and brings readers into a world of gangsters, raves, and police brutality. “I believe that literature and music intersect and so I wanted to bring that strong dub reggae soundtrack into the telling of this story,” the author told the Chicago Review of Books. “I did a lot of experimenting with language, dub reggae sound effects, and toasting lyrics to tell the story of this sub-culture in a way that evoked that time and place and the extraordinary people within it.” It’s a novel with a strong sense of setting, community, and musicality—one that is drawn from the author’s own experiences and took sixteen years to write.

Trespasses by Louise Kennedy

Trespasses, set in 1970s Northern Ireland, is Kennedy’s first novel and it has found considerable acclaim—garnering endorsements from the likes of Sarah Moss, Max Porter, and Nick Hornby. It follows a young, female teacher who falls for a married man as The Troubles tear their community apart. He’s a barrister, he tells her, but this is a place where it doesn’t matter what you do—it’s all about “what you are.” They must keep their relationship a secret from everyone they know, for their own safety as much as for marital continuity. The New York Times called it “brilliant, beautiful, heartbreaking.” Kennedy, who started writing fiction in her forties, previously published a well-regarded collection of formally inventive short stories, The End of the World is a Cul de Sac. 

Despite the statistics given above, it does seem the tide has been turning. Female writers have been increasingly dominant on fiction shortlists in recent years, prompting some to mourn the decline of the “literary bloke”, or wonder aloud where all the young male novelists have gone. The literary gender gap is now, in fact, most exaggerated in nonfiction; an equivalent prize for factual writing by women will be launched by the same organisation in 2024. Whether or not you agree with the concept of gender-specific prizes, here’s to hoping that there’s little call for them in the not-so-distant future.