The Women’s Prize Trust – the UK charity which creates equitable opportunities for women in the world of books – recently announced the shortlist for the 30th Women’s Prize for Fiction. In this year, the 2025 selection features multi-generational perspectives and a strong showing of debuts, with four of the six books written by new voices. The need for personal freedom and human connection unites the list, with autonomy, love and friendship providing the salve for life’s challenges. Thematically, the shortlist also spotlights novels which question history’s grip on our lives, alongside stories which navigate our prevailing search for identity. A number of the novels employ humor – from biting satire to nuanced observational comedy – to explore difficult issues surrounding cultural heritage. Queer relationships and emotional or sexual reawakenings through life are also a prominent theme.
The shortlisted titles for the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction are as follows:
Good Girl by Aria Aber, published by Bloomsbury Publishing
All Fours by Miranda July, published by Canongate Books
The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, published by 4th Estate, HarperCollins
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout, published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House
The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden, published by Viking, Penguin General, Penguin Random House
Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Orion Publishing Group, Hachette
Kit de Waal, chair of judges said, “Over the past three decades the Women’s Prize for Fiction has celebrated imaginative, accomplished novels year after year, and in doing so has helped change the landscape for fiction writing in the UK. Over the past six months, my fellow judges and I have been knee-deep in reading our submissions, consumed by the fully-realized worlds created by an incredible range of voices. Now that we arrive at the announcement of our shortlist, what seems absolutely apparent to me is how perfectly each of these six novels exemplify the original tenets of the prize: originality, accessibility and sheer brilliance. Our selection celebrates rich, multi-layered narratives that will surprise, move and delight the reader, all drawing on, in different ways, the importance of human connection. What is surprising and refreshing is to see so much humor, nuance and lightness employed by these novelists to shed light on challenging concepts. I’m in no doubt that these six novels will become classics of the future.”
Three of the books explore the tension between Western values and cultural traditions, through the prism of different countries: Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji is a family drama told through five passionate women whose fate is intertwined with that of modern Iran. Spanning the 1940s to the 2000s, this story explores the question of whether it’s ever possible to free ourselves from our past. Nussaibah Younis’s Fundamentally takes a wry look at a UN de-radicalization program for ISIS women in Iraq, and explores the ethical questions around the West’s attempts to intervene on an individual’s right to choose values that misalign with its own. Set in Berlin’s underground club scene, Good Girl by Aria Aber also explores the complexities of a dual-cultural identity, for a teenager born in Germany ashamed of and hiding her Afghan heritage.
Breaking self-imposed or societal boundaries and finding emotional freedom is a common theme that runs through a number of the novels. In The Safekeep, a woman in her thirties has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother’s home, only to find everything upended when a young woman moves in. Exploring the impact of emotional repression and historical amnesia, Yael van der Wouden’s work delves into sexual desire and the simultaneous discovery of self. All Fours by Miranda July is an irreverent, funny novel which questions the restrictions of marriage, motherhood and sexuality in relation to artistic autonomy. Its narrator, grappling with midlife, immerses herself in a temporary reinvention on a thwarted road trip. The nuances of human relationships are also central to Tell Me Everything. Elizabeth Strout illuminates the lives of her much-loved, returned to characters, through the reflections, hopes and regrets they share in their later years. Portraying the richness of ordinary lives and loves in a small New England town, Strout shows us that it’s love that usually keeps us afloat.
The 2025 shortlist features four debut novelists (Aria Aber, Sanam Mahloudji, Yael van der Wouden and Nussaibah Younis). Miranda July is shortlisted for her second novel following an established career as a film-maker and performance artist. She has also previously published a short story collection. Elizabeth Strout is the author of nine other novels, including Amy & Isabelle which was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize in 2000. She has subsequently been longlisted twice for the Prize, in 2014 for The Burgess Boys and in 2016 for My Name is Lucy Barton.
Kit de Waal is joined on the judging panel by novelist, journalist and inaugural winner of the 2006 Orange Award for New Writers (the Women’s Prize for debut novelists) Diana Evans; author, journalist and mental-health campaigner Bryony Gordon; magazine editor, most recently editor-in-chief of Glamour UK, Deborah Joseph; and musician and composer known for award-winning film scores, Amelia Warner.
The winner of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced on Thursday 12 June 2025 at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in central London, along with the winner of the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. The winner will receive a cheque for £30,000, anonymously endowed, along with a limited-edition bronze statuette known as the ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven.
