The Safekeep
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
In 1961 Netherlands, solitary Isabel’s life is disrupted when her brother’s girlfriend Eva stays at the family house. Suspicion and desire uncover its suppressed wartime ownership.
Selector archive · 2006—2025
Women’s Prize for Fiction
Women’s Prize for Fiction selections, presented by recognition year. Each entry links to the selector’s first-party record.
- Selections
- 20
- Authors
- 19
- Years
- 20
Showing 1–20 of 20
Brotherless Night
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Tamil medical student Sashi watches her family fracture during Sri Lanka’s civil war. Her brothers take different paths as state violence and militancy narrow neutrality.
Demon Copperhead
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
- Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Born into poverty in Appalachia, Demon narrates his passage through foster care, football, exploitation, and opioid addiction. The novel recasts David Copperfield in a contemporary American voice.
The Book of Form and Emptiness
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
After his father dies, Benny Oh hears voices from objects while his mother struggles with grief and hoarding. A library and the voice of his own Book offer refuge.
Piranesi
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Piranesi lives in an immense House of halls, statues, tides, and clouds. Messages and evidence challenge what the only other living person has told him.
Hamnet
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
- NPR Books We Love
- +1
In Stratford, Agnes and her playwright husband build a family shattered by their son Hamnet’s death. The novel imagines the domestic life surrounding Hamlet.
An American Marriage
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are separated when Roy is wrongfully imprisoned. Their letters record a marriage changing as Celestial builds a life during his absence.
Home Fire
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
British Muslim siblings are pulled into conflict with a home secretary’s ambitious son. Recruitment to ISIS turns private loyalty into a public crisis.
The Power
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
- NPR Books We Love
- +1
Teenage girls develop the ability to generate electrical force, reversing assumptions about physical power. Four lives trace the upheaval across politics, religion, crime, and media.
The Glorious Heresies
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
An accidental killing connects Cork residents navigating crime, sex work, addiction, and religion. Their darkly comic paths reveal a neglected underclass.
How to Be Both
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Linked narratives connect grieving teenager George with Renaissance painter Francesco del Cossa. Editions present the halves in either order, changing their echoes.
A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
- NPR Books We Love
A young Irish woman addresses the brother whose brain tumor shapes their family. Fragmented language follows her through religious pressure, violence, defiance, and grief.
May We Be Forgiven
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Historian Harold Silver’s life collapses after his volatile brother causes a fatal accident. Harold becomes responsible for a fractured household and improvised family.
The Song of Achilles
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Exiled prince Patroclus befriends and loves Achilles before following him to Troy. Prophecy and martial glory steadily close around their bond.
The Tiger’s Wife
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
- The New York Times — 10 Best Books
In a Balkan country recovering from war, doctor Natalia investigates her grandfather’s death. His tales of a deathless man and tiger’s wife mingle folklore with history.
The Lacuna
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Harrison Shepherd works for Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, and Leon Trotsky before becoming a novelist. Diaries trace how public fear and McCarthyism reshape his life.
Home
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Glory Boughton returns to Gilead to care for her father as her troubled brother Jack comes home. Their reunion tests the family’s language of forgiveness.
The Road Home
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Widower Lev leaves Eastern Europe for London to earn money for his family. Low-paid work, friendship, humiliation, and culinary ambition shape his future.
Half of a Yellow Sun
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Twin sisters, a professor, a houseboy, and an English writer are drawn into the Biafran War. Their relationships change under secession, hunger, displacement, and violence.
On Beauty
- Women’s Prize for Fiction
Two opposed academic families become entangled through rivalry, attraction, and betrayal near Boston. Howard Belsey’s public principles contrast with disorder inside his interracial family.