From Sri Lanka to New South Wales and Shanghai, these wide-ranging stories are united by a compelling focus on women’s experience
• Anne Enright, Kate Grenville and Isabella Hammad shortlisted for Women’s prize for fiction
Very few literary prizes have the power to significantly move the needle in terms of securing a larger readership for the books they champion. One of those is the Women’s prize for fiction, and therefore it has been a great responsibility and honour for me and my fellow judges – Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀, Laura Dockrill, Indira Varma and Anna Whitehouse – to select this year’s shortlist. It features six spellbinding and thought-provoking novels.
Isabella Hammad’s Enter Ghost tells the story of Sonia, a British-Palestinian actor, who goes to visit her sister in Israel. She is persuaded to join a local theatre troupe that is attempting, against the odds, to stage a production of Hamlet in the West Bank. It’s an exquisite piece of storytelling that weaves history and politics and family with a profound meditation on the purpose of art. It’s nuanced, multilayered and gorgeously written and, as with all great novels, rewards multiple readings.
