Women's Prize for Fiction 2025 - Longlist Predictions

The Longlist for the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction will be announced in a few days - on 4 March 2025.  

I really love this award. It fuels my reading soul, introducing me to new authors and ideas. I have been mulling over what might make the list this year, and stock piling novels in anticipation. While I have no insider information and have not even pondered eligibility requirements, I have come up with an unscientific list of predictions for the 2025 Longlist.  

Here's what I reckon might make the list:

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Dream Count
• Kaliane Bradley - The Ministry of Time
• Clare Chambers - Shy Creatures
• Carys Davies - Clear
• Miranda July - All Fours
• Rachel Khong - Real Americans 
• Emily Maguire - Rapture
• Elizabeth O'Connor - Whale Fall 
• Sally Rooney - Intermezzo
• Elif Shafak - There are Rivers in the Sky
• Ali Smith - Gliff
• Anne Tyler - Three Days in June
• Yael Van Der Wouden - The Safekeep
• Evie Wyld - The Echoes

Of course, some of this may just be wishful thinking.... 

All shall be revealed in a couple of days, enough time for me to finish another title and prepare for my March reading. 

International Booker Longlist 2025

The International Booker Prize 2025 Longlist has been announced with thirteen titles of fiction translated into English.

The longlist is as follows:

• 
  A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre (translated by Mark Hutchison)
• On a Woman's Madness by Astrid Roemer (translated by Lucy Scott)
• Heat Lamp by Banu Mushtaq (translated by Deepa Bhasthi)
• Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico (translated by Sophie Hughes)
• Eurotrash by Christian Kracht (translated by Daniel Dowles)
• Under the Eye of the Big Bird by Hiromo Kawakami (translated by Asa Yoneda)
• Hunchback by Saou Ichakawa (translated by Polly Barton)
• Small Bone by Vincent Delecroix (translated by Helen Stevenson)
• Reservoir Bitches by Dahlia de la Cerda (translated by Julis Sanches, Heather Cleary)
• Solenoid by Mircea Cartarescu (translated by Sean Colter)
• There's a Monster Behind the Door by Gaellle Belem (translated by Kareen Fleetwood, Laetitia Saint-Loubert)
• On the Calculation of Volume 1 by Solvej Balle (translated by Barbara J Haveland)
• The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem (translated by Sinan Antoon)

Max Porter, Chair of the judges writes of this longlist: 

'Translated fiction is not an elite or rarefied cultural space requiring expert knowledge; it is the exact opposite. It is stories of every conceivable kind from everywhere, for everyone. It is a miraculous way in which we might meet one another in all our strangeness and sameness, and defy the borders erected between us... 

‘In these books people are sharing strategies for survival; they are cheating, lying, joking and innovating. Some people are no longer of this earth, or they are sending visions from the future or from parallel universes. These books bring us into the agony of family, workplace or nation-state politics, the near-spiritual secrecy of friendship, the inner architecture of erotic feeling, the banality of capitalism and the agitations of faith.'

The prize awards £25,000 to the author and £25,000 to the translator, in recognition of the essential work of translators in bringing fiction to a wider audience. I need to read more translated fiction, so will be keen to investigate these titles further.

The shortlist of 6 titles will be announced on 8 April and the winner on 20 May 2025.

Pan's Labyrinth

I noticed Liz Moore's The God of the Woods (2024) as it had been on the New York Times bestseller list for many months and was in the mood for a mystery thriller.

It's August 1975 at Camp Emerson, a retreat on the Van Laar Preserve, in the Adirondacks of New York State. Camp counsellor Louise awakens to find one of the bunks empty and realises that the missing camper is Barbara Van Laar, the thirteen year old daughter of the family that owns the camp. A rapid search begins, made more urgent by the knowledge that fourteen years earlier Barbara's brother Bear Van Laar also disappeared from the property, and the fear that an escaped killer is on the loose. 

Told in alternating narratives and timelines, the story unfolds. Back in the 1950s we meet Alice, mother of Barbara and Bear. In 1961 volunteer firefighter Carl leads a search team looking for Bear. In 1975 camper Tracy is in awe of her bunkmate and navigating the first feelings of a crush. Also in 1975 Judy, the young police investigator, is working the case.  

The Van Laars are a wealthy family who throw an annual party at Self Reliance, their home in the Van Laar Preserve. This is a weekend of alcohol-fuelled games for the Van Laar's glamorous guests. Barbara does not fit in here. She is rebellious, into punk rock, and knows little is expected of her as a girl in a patriarchal family. Her mother, Alice, doesn't fit in either. She is anxious and drinks too much to quell her nerves. 

The God of the Woods is a page-turning mystery, with its twists and turns, but it is so much more than that. There is a story here about class - the haves and have nots - as evidenced by the Van Laars and their guests contrasting with the blue-collar workers on the Preserve. There is also a subtext of gender and societal expectations of girls and women. Moore has created characters who grow on the reader - TJ, Louise, Judyta - as the story unfurls. Plus, Moore has so clearly portrayed the setting of Camp Emerson, that readers who have spent time at a sleep-away camp will be gripped by nostalgia for campfires and mess halls.

I really enjoyed this novel and the ways in which Moore built the suspense. I was also satisfied by the ending, though I can understand why some readers may want a different outcome. While reading I also listened to the audiobook expertly narrated by Saskia Maarlevald. Overall, a terrific read. I hope that Moore writes another novel feature investigator Judyta Luptack, a wonderful character who deserves a series of her own. 

Women's Prize for Non-Fiction Longlist 2025

The second annual Women's Prize for Non-Fiction longlist has been revealed! This prize celebrates non-fiction written by women. The Winner will receive £30,000. Sixteen works of non-fiction were longlisted.

The 2025 longlist is as follows:

Anne Applebaum - Autocracy Inc: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World

This is a timely book that I am keen to read. Journalist and historian Anne Applebaum, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Gulag: A History (2003), turns her attention to the corrupt networks that infiltrate governments. Given what is happening in America right now, this feels like an urgent road map to return to democracy. 

Eleanor Barraclough - Embers of the Hands: Hidden Histories of the Viking Age

We often associate Vikings with strong warriors plundering villages.  In fact, the people of the Viking Age were much more diverse. This book looks at the day-to-day lives of the Viking people and their culture. Author Barraclough is a historian and broadcaster who previously published Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas (2016).

Helen Castor - The Eagle and the Hart: The Tragedy of Richard II and Henry 

First cousins, Richard and Henry were born three months apart. As children, Richard was crowned King, and Henry served at his side. Despite their close upbringing, they were opposites: Richard a narcissist and Henry a chivalric hero. Fearful, Richard banished his cousin, leading the pair to a confrontation. Acclaimed medieval and Tudor historian Castor, is also the author of She-Wolves: The Women Who Ruled England Before Elizabeth (2010).

Nenah Cherry - A Thousand Threads

Swedish singer-songwriter Cherry achieved global success with 'Buffalo Stance' in 1988. She went on to have a lauded career, winning awards for her music. Cherry has now written a memoir of her life as an artist, and the people who influenced her. 

Rachel Clarke - The Story of a Heart

Palliative care doctor Rachel Clarke, is the author of three bestselling non-fiction books. Here she writes about nine-year-old Keira who was in a devastating car accident. Keira's brain and organs began to shut down, but her heart continued to beat. Her family agreed to donate her heart and it was gifted to nine-year old Max. Clarke tells this story of grief and a lifesaving gift.

Chloe Dalton - Raising Hare

During lockdown, Dalton retreated to the countryside of her childhood and found herself the custodian of a newborn hare. This book is the story of nurturing the animal and preparing it for release in the wild. Dalton is a political adviser and foreign policy specialist who has spent a decade in the UK public service. This is her debut book.

Jenni Fagan - Ootlin

Fagan was born in state care in Scotland and by age seven had lived in fourteen different homes. In her memoir, Fagan described her experiences of displacement and exclusion on her journey through the UK care system. Novelist and poet. Fagan is the author of novels The Panopticon (2013), The Sunlight Pilgrims (2016), Luckenbooth (2021) and Hex (2022).

Lulu Miller - Why Fish Don't Exist: A Story of Loss, Love and the Hidden Order of Life

In her debut book, science reporter Miller explores the work of David Starr Jordan, a 19th century taxonomist. Jordan was a fish specialist mapping out the taxonomy on fish when an earthquake shatters his specimen collection. Besides his work as a scientist, Jordan was also a champion of eugenics and president of Stanford University.

Clare Mulley - Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Fearless WW2 Resistance Fighter Elzbieta Zawacka

Historian Mulley has a keen interest in the experience of women in the Second World War. Here she tells the story of Zo, an emissary of the Polish Home Army Command who travelled from Warsaw to London. Zo was the only female member of the elite Polish Special Forces. The Gestapo arrested her family when the Nazis occupied Poland. She also took a leading role in the Warsaw Uprising. Sounds like an incredible story of a remarkable woman.

Rebecca Nagle - By the Fire We Carry: The Generations-Long Fight for Justice on Native Land

Award-winning journalist and Cherokee woman Nagle book is about the forced removal of Native Americans onto treaty lands throughout American history. In 2020 a Supreme Court ruling in Sharp v Murphy affirmed that tribal lands are "Indian country" and any crimes committed on these lands are not subject to state prosecution. Nagle traces the long fight for sovereignty in Eastern Oklahoma.

Sue Prideaux - Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gaugin

Post-Impressionist artist Paul Gaugin is best known for his colourful paintings of French Polynesia. In this biography, Prideaux writes about his career as a stockbroker in Paris, a tarpaulin salesman in Copenhagen, a canal digger in Panama, and other diverse endeavours as well as his life as an artist. Prideaux has previously written biographies of Edvard Munch, Strindberg, Friedrich Nietzsche.

Helen Scales - What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World's Ocean

Marine biologist and author, Scales explores the future of the ocean by looking at the past and how the prehistoric ocean ecology has lessons for today. Despite the devastating impact of climate change, Scales is hopeful that protection of the ocean and marine life combined with sustainable industry will protect the ocean for future generations.

Kate Summerscale - The Peepshow: The Murders at 10 Rillington Place

Bestselling author of The Suspicions of Mr Whicher (2008),  award-winning author Kate Summerscale has turned her attention to another grizzly crime. In London in 1953 police discover the bodies of three young women inside a wall at a Notting Hill terrace. Exploring further they find bones beneath the floorboards and in the garden. A manhunt is launched to find a former tenant Reg Christie. But is he the killer?

Harriet Wistrich - Sister in Law: Fighting for Justice in a System Designed by Men

Solicitor and advocate for women's justice, Harriet Wistrich, has acted in many high profile cases involving violence against women. In this book she explores landmark cases that demonstrate how the legal system is skewed towards men. I have a keen interest in gender and justice and look forward to reading this account of Wistrich's career in law.

Alexis Wright - Tracker

I am thrilled that Waanyi author Alexis Wright has been recognised for her Stella Prize winning memoir of Aboriginal Tracker Tilmouth. Part of Australia's shameful Stolen Generation past, Tracker was raised on a mission on Corker Island and grew up to become a well-regarded activist and advocate. Using oral history and storytelling from Aboriginal folk who knew him, Wright has crafted a memoir of a remarkable man.

Yuan Yang - Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in New China

As the first Chinese-born British MP, Yuan Yang lived in China for four years before she moved to the UK. As an adult she returned as a journalist. Here, in her first book, she tells the stories of four Chinese women aspiring for a better future. China is evolving in the modern era and the role of women is changing with it. Sounds like an interesting portrait of women and a nation.

The Chair of the Judges, Kavita Puri, said of the Longlist:

'What unites these diverse titles, that boast so many different disciplines and genres, is the accomplishment of the writing, the originality of the storytelling and the incisiveness of the research. Here are books that provoke debate and discussion, that offer insight into new experiences and perspectives, and that bring overlooked stories back to life and recognition. Amongst this stellar list, there are also reads that expertly steer us through the most pressing issues of our time, show the resilience of the human spirit, alongside others that elucidate the dangers of unchecked power, the consequence of oppression and the need for action and defiance.'

I have not read any of these titles, but I have a keen interest in the books by Applebaum, Mulley, Nagle and Wistrich. Some are not yet available in Australia so I will have to wait to track them down.

The shortlist will be announced on 26 March 2025 and the winner will be revealed on 12 June 2025. Happy reading!

Want more? Here is the video of the Longlist announcement.

Possession

One of the novels I most wanted to read from the 2024 Booker Prize Shortlist was Yael Van Der Wouden's The Safe Keep (2024). Set in a rural area of the Netherlands, it is fifteen years after the end of the Second World War. The buildings have been reconstructed after the damage of war, but the people still bear deep scars.

It is 1961 and Isabel lives by herself in the serene country home she and her brothers moved to during the war. She cared for her mother until her death and now cares for her house with the same discipline. Isabel has had help in the form of various housekeepers, but is constantly on the look out for someone stealing from her. 

Her brothers left home long ago. Louis lives a bachelor's life with a series of girlfriends. As the eldest is the heir to the home, and plans to allow Isabel to live there until he marries. Younger brother Hendrik is gay, living a closeted life with his partner Sebastian. The three siblings have occasional dinners together but are not particularly close.

Isabel's solitary life of routine is disrupted when Louis drops off his latest girlfriend to live in the house when he travels for work. Eva is the complete opposite of Isabel - charismatic, curious, free. Isabel immediately dislikes the girl and the invasion of her sacred space. Isabel is annoyed that Eva sleeps in her late mother's bed, that she is friendly with the housekeeper, that she touches things in the house. Isabel is openly hostile to her, rather than a gracious host. Over the next few weeks, Eva attempts to get to know Isabel and is rebuffed, often quote rudely, at every turn. Both are uneasy in each other's presence, yet they are drawn together. If Isabel can loosen her self-restraint, she may just find some of the freedom she so admires in others.

In her debut novel, Van Der Wouden has crafted a story about ownership and possession. Isabel is entrenched in a house which she knows she will never own and can be ousted anytime her brother chooses. Isabel carefully counts each teaspoon and obsesses over the Delft plates in the cabinet. They are her only companions. Eva views these possessions quite differently and appears, to Isabel, to be completely untethered to anything or anyone.

Van Der Wouden has created believable characters with nuance and tenderness. Isabel initially comes across as restrained, unyielding and unlikeable. Eva appears superficial and frivolous. But as the story unfolds, and the tensions between them grow, Isabel's hardness begins to crack and she begins a sexual awakening. Likewise Eva reveals hidden depths. The first two parts focus mainly on Isabel. In Part III there is a narrative shift as we read Eva's diaries and get her perspective on past events. There is a wonderful twist and forces readers to see both women in a new light. 

With great skill, the author navigates the post-war reckoning and the legacy of loss and dispossession. The characters were all children during the war, impacted in different ways. Now in their late twenties, there remains a lingering trauma which manifests in different ways for each. 

The Safe Keep is such a good novel. I was engrossed in the story and continued to think about the characters long after I had finished reading. 

Party Time

With a federal election looming in Australia, George Megalogenis' Quarterly Essay (QE96) Minority Report - The New Shape of Australian Politics (2024) is a timely exploration of the Australian political landscape. 

In Minority Report, Megalogenis takes a look at how the electorate is shifting away from the duopoly of Labor and the Coalition to a broader, more representative government. Younger voters in particular are not rusted-on voters to any party, are sceptical about politics, and have a wider range of interests.  The rise of the Teal independents - brilliantly explained in Margot Saville's The Teal Revolution (2022) - has made Australian politics far more interesting and diverse.

Megalogenis argues that a shift began in the Australian electorate with the 2010 election and the end of the historic 40-40-20 rule. This rule held that Labor and the Coalition would each score 40% of the vote and the remaining 20% was made up by minority parties and independents. Indeed the Liberal Party would not survive outside of its decades-long Liberal-National Coalition. The pendulum has swung away from the major parties and it is unlikely to return back to the two-party dominance of the past.

The other shift which has occurred is power moving from Queensland and Western Australia (where the electorate is predominately regional/rural) to more urban, younger and multicultural areas. The dynamic, diverse cities of Melbourne and Sydney will determine the outcome of the next election.

Melalogenis argues that Albanese is pursuing a strategy of building trust and consolidating power in his first term, and then pursuing reform in his second term. But, the failure of the voice referendum (a devastating rejection of our First Nations people that I will never get over), has made Albanese more timid and less ambitious. His opponent is well versed in the politics of 'No' and is growing more Trumpian each day. 

The reform success of past governments is explored. Hawke/Keating brought forth Medicare, superannuation, immigration and closer ties with Asia. Gillard created the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Howard took the GST to the electorate and brought in gun reform. Albanese sought to do this with the Voice to Parliament, but needed the support of the Opposition. 

Housing is the big issue in the electorate, especially in Melbourne and Sydney where median house prices have exploded but supply has not kept up with demand. Older generations, especially those who have acquired multiple properties as investments, want to hold and pass down their wealth. Younger generations have long since given up the idea of owning property as they have been priced out of the market. Housing is in need of bold reform, not tinkering at the edges. Alan Kohler spoke of this in his excellent Quarterly Essay 92 - The Great Divide (2023). 

Politics requires a vision for the future and a willingness to negotiate to get things done. It is highly likely that whoever wins the next election will face a hung parliament and will need to work with the crossbench. Prime Minister Julia Gillard worked with independents to bring about positive change. 

Megalogenis concludes his essay with optimism, sharing his view 'that a hung parliament offers our last best chance to restore purpose to our politics - and policymaking' (p65). We won't have to wait too long for the election to be called and to see whether this view holds up. I hope it does. 

Another quality Quarterly Essay - so glad I subscribe to this publication! My review of George Megalogenis' Quarterly Essay 61 - Balancing Act (2016) is also available on this blog.