2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist ‘examines the messy business of being human’

A week after the International Booker Prize longlist spotlighted contemporary concerns such as conflict, authoritarianism, women’s freedom, gender and historical trauma, these themes resurfaced in the longlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, announced on March 4.

Introducing the 16 nominated books, Julia Gillard, Chair of Judges and former Prime Minister of Australia, said: “These sixteen books masterfully demonstrate the power of fiction to examine the messy business of being human. From climate change to artificial intelligence, they navigate the issues of our time with urgency and purpose, they immerse us in environments and experiences that are sometimes like our own, but more often are radically different, and they explore identities and perspectives that are often ignored or forgotten, amidst those inherently universal and recognisable.”

Last year’s Booker Prize nominees Katie Kitamura and Susan Choi, Indian author Megha Majumdar and British novelist Kit de Waal are among the nominees for the £30,000 (around ₹36 lakh) prize.

While Kitamura’s novel Audition follows a successful actor in midlife as she reflects on her marriage and motherhood, Choi’s intergenerational saga Flashlight follows a Korean’s family journey across geographies. Both books were well-received and strong contenders for the Booker Prize last year.

Read review of Audition by Katie Kitamura

Read review of Flashlight by Susan Choi

New York-based Majumdar sets her novel, A Guardian and a Thief, in a future Kolkata as the city reels under drought and floods and its denizens fight for survival each day. The book was an Oprah Book Club pick and a finalist for the National Book Award in the U.S.

Read review of A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar

Former Australian PM Julia Gillard (centre), Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, with the other members of the jury.
| Photo Credit:
womensprize.com

The other books in the longlist include Hannah Lillith Assadi’s Paradiso 17, about a Palestinian man’s search for home; Manchester-based Indian-origin writer Sheena Kalayil’s The Others, about the final days of the Berlin Wall; Virginia Evans’ The Correspondent, a meditation on love and forgiveness; and Elaine Castillo’s romance novel Moderation; and Wild Dark Shore, about a woman in a shipwreck, by Charlotte McConaghy.

The debut novelists on the list are Lily King (Heart the Lover), Wendy Erskine (The Benefactors), Marcia Hutchinson (The Mercy Step), Addie E. Citchens (Dominion), Lucy Apps (Gloria Don’t Speak), Rozie Kelly (Kingfisher) and Alice Evelyn Yang (Beast Slinks Towards Beijing). Last year’s prize went to Dutch writer Yael van der Wouden for her debut novel The Safekeep, set in a post-World War II Dutch society.

A shortlist of six books will be announced on April 22, followed by the winner of both the Fiction and Non-Fiction prizes on June 11. Booker winner Arundhati Roy features on the Non-Fiction longlist with her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me.

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