Posted on September 9, 2020 at 2:45 PM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek

Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell, has been announced as the winner of the 2020 Women's Prize for Fiction.

The £30,000 prize (about $38,500 US) was scheduled to come out in June but was postponed until fall.

Hamnet studies how the loss of their adolescent son marks the relationship between William Shakespeare (though he's never referred to by that name) and his wife.

It's perhaps a nod to that death — caused by plague — that inspired one judge's comments on the novel's victory.

“It expresses something profound about the human experience that seems both extraordinarily current and at the same time, enduring,” said Martha Lane Fox, the chair of judges.

O'Farrell edged out literary heavyweights Hilary Mantel and Bernardine Evaristo to win the prize.

Read more about her reaction to the victory and what judges thought of her novel in the Guardian.

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Categories: Today in Books

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