Women's Prize for Fiction

This is their debut.

And it's won the Women's Prize, the International Booker Prize.

And I enjoyed it.

But I know it's not a book for everyone.

And at number two and up four places, we have Florence Knapp's The Names, a family drama that explores how different choices and identities can shape the course of a life.

And then up one place into top spot, we have Virginia Evans' The Correspondent, the winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2026.

Through letters and written exchanges, a lifelong correspondent reflects on relationships, family, and the passage of time.

So there we have it.

Strong word of mouth.

I think it's, I think it's a great book club choice.

But obviously the biggest reason it's, uh, for its sales is that it won the, the Women's Prize for Fiction 2026.

Um, and that, and that's not just all actually.

In 2020, she published Hamnet, which it's fair to say is already a 21st century classic.

It won the Women's Prize for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction, and was Waddesdon's Book of the Year.

With director Chloe Zhao, Maggie wrote the screenplay for a multi-award winning film adaptation, which we all saw a few months ago, sobbed buckets of tears over, and have yet to pick up the pieces and resume our lives after seeing it.

Maggie's latest novel is The Brilliant Land.

I say to myself, yeah.

Uh, at a, a lovely function on Thursday night, and, and I, uh, chaired the Women's Prize for Fiction the year that my daughter was born, my second child.

I agreed to it when I only had one child.

I had absolutely no idea what was coming around the corner.

It was more, she has had an amazing career.

She's been able to be such a brilliant advocate for writers over the course of her life with the Women's Prize.

And the rooms of people that therefore I was allowed to be in because of how amazing she was, they were just so great.

I've always found that going to literary events or book events, when you're standing in those rooms, people genuinely want to talk about books.

And I think together, those two are the reason that I write in fantasy.

But you continue... to be inspired every single time you pick up a new fantasy novel.

If I had to pick out a couple of newer ones, I think Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, which won the Women's Prize in 21, I think.

That is such an atypical fantasy, and it brought more readers to the genre in a And it's because it was done in a completely new original way, new formatting.