The shortlist for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction has been announced and includes novels by Booker Prize-winning authors Pat Barker and Anna Burns.
Barker's The Silence of the Girls is based on The Iliad and told largely from the perspective of Briseis, the widow of King Mynes, who is "awarded" to Achilles after the Greeks capture Lyrnessus during the Trojan War. Burns's Milkman, for which she won the 2018 Booker Prize, is set during the Troubles in Northern Ireland and tells the story of a teenage girl harassed by an older man.
Madeline Miller's Circe, which is also rooted in Greek myth, debut novelist Oyinkan Braithwaite's My Sister, the Serial Killer, a domestic drama set in Lagos, Diana Evans's Ordinary People, an exploration of marriage and middle-age, and Tayari Jones's An American Marriage, about a man wrongly accused of a crime, complete the six-book shortlist.
“It’s a fantastic shortlist; exciting, vibrant, adventurous,” said chair of the judges Professor Kate Willimas. “We fell totally in love with these books and the amazing worlds they created. These books are fiction at its best – brilliant, courageous and utterly captivating.”
The winner of the £30,000 (Dh142,578) award will be announced on June 5.
