Women’s prize for fiction reveals longlist ‘overflowing with compelling stories’

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Miranda July and Elizabeth Strout are among the writers longlisted for the 30th Women’s prize for fiction.

Karen Jennings and Laila Lalami also appear on the list of 16 writers now in contention for the £30,000 prize.

“There were many lively debates on the judging panel over the final 16 books and it was a very close-run thing, but the list we have revealed today is overflowing with compelling stories, and writing that demonstrates passion, wit and empathy,” said writer and judging chair Kit de Waal.

Adichie was chosen for her much-anticipated fourth novel Dream Count, which tells the interlocking stories of four women navigating love, friendship, trauma, and social pressures to marry and have children. The Nigerian novelist previously won the prize in 2007 for Half of a Yellow Sun, which was also voted the “winner of winners” in 2020. Her other two novels, Purple Hibiscus and Americanah, were shortlisted in 2004 and 2014 respectively.

Social expectations on women are also explored in July’s second novel All Fours. The story sees a 45-year-old artist leave her husband and child at home to embark on a road trip from Los Angeles to New York. Soon after setting off, she decides to check into a motel room instead, where she begins a sexless affair with a younger man.

Women’s prize for fiction 2025 judges: Deborah Joseph; Amelia Warner; Kit de Waal; Diana Evans and Bryony Gordon. Photograph: Women’s prize

Strout was selected for Tell Me Everything, in which characters from her previous novels, Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton, meet. This is her fourth time on the longlist.

Lalami, who was longlisted in 2010 for Secret Son, was selected this time for The Dream Hotel, which explores the dangers of surveillance and algorithms. Her protagonist, Sara, is travelling home from a conference when she is pulled aside at the airport and told that data from her dreams suggests she is at risk of harming her husband, meaning she must be transferred to a “retention centre”.

Many of this year’s longlisted titles are set against a backdrop of politics, social change and war. In Jennings’ book, Crooked Seeds, a white woman returns to her South African home and grapples with her brother’s association with a pro-apartheid group. In Yael van der Wouden’s debut novel The Safekeep, also shortlisted for the Booker prize, the treatment of Jews in the postwar Netherlands is explored. Another debut, Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis, is a satire about an aid worker tasked with rehabilitating Isis women.

“These are important, far-reaching novels where brilliantly realised characters navigate the complexities of families and modern relationships, whilst pushing the boundaries placed around them,” said De Waal. “It’s a list that readers will devour and shows the echoes of world events on everyday lives as well as the power and brilliance of women writing today.”

Completing the longlist are Good Girl by Aria Aber, The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley, Somewhere Else by Jenni Daiches, Amma by Saraid de Silva, The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell, A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike, Birding by Rose Ruane, and The Artist by Lucy Steeds.

Alongside De Waal on this year’s judging panel are the novelist Diana Evans, journalists Bryony Gordon and Deborah Joseph, and composer Amelia Warner.

A shortlist of six books will be announced on 2 April, while the winner will be revealed on 12 June, alongside the winner of the Women’s prize for nonfiction – the longlist for which was unveiled last month.

To be eligible for this year’s prize, books had to be published in the UK between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025.

Previous winners of the prize for fiction include Zadie Smith, Ali Smith and Maggie O’Farrell. Last year, VV Ganeshananthan won the prize for Brotherless Night.