Women's prize for fiction shortlist favours new voices over big hitters

Three debuts make the six-strong lineup, including British author Imogen Hermes Gowar, while ‘grand old names’ such as Arundhati Roy lose out

From Arundhati Roy to Jennifer Egan, some of the biggest names in literature have fallen by the wayside in the race for this year’s Women’s prize for fiction. Instead the judges have plumped for titles they felt “spoke most directly and truthfully” to them.

Three fiction debuts made the six-strong lineup for the £30,000 award: British authors Imogen Hermes Gowar, chosen for her historical novel The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, which imagines the capture of a mermaid in Georgian London, and Jessie Greengrass for Sight, about the journey to motherhood; and American Elif Batuman for The Idiot, set at Harvard university during the 1990s.

Related: Women's prize for fiction reveals 'outward-looking' longlist

Continue reading...