Here are the 16 novels longlisted for the 2024 Women's Prize for Fiction! It's an eclectic group that includes contemporary novels, historical fiction, political tales, coming of age stories and sci-fi. A new video is up on my YouTube channel unboxing and discovering all these titles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2j7ytX2h388
It's quite exciting how there are stories here which span the globe including Canada, the Caribbean, Great Britain, Ireland, Africa, the Middle East, Australia, East Asia and Sri Lanka. Former Women's Prize winner Kate Grenville is here alongside Anne Enright who has been nominated multiple times and former longlistee V.V. Ganneshananthan. There are 8 debut novels including Chetna Maroo whose novel “Western Lane” was shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize and it was one of my favourite books that I read last year.
I only correctly predicted four on this list and I've currently only read three of them. It's great to see “The Wren, The Wren” here as it was the very first novel I read this year and I was completely taken by this clever family story. I also was enthralled by “River East, River West” so I'm thrilled this debut is getting more attention.
I'd already been eager to read “Soldier Sailor”, “Nightbloom” and “8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster” so I'll probably start with them, but I'm eager to explore more of these titles and might read by whim. Hopefully I'll have read most of these books by the time the winner is announced (alongside the first winner of the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction) on June 13.
It's always such a pleasure discovering new books through this prize and finally getting to some novels I've been meaning to read. What do you think of the longlist? Which novels do you want to read first?
