Posted on June 6, 2018 at 9:14 AM by Sadye Scott-Hainchek
Kamila Shamsie has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction, for her novel Homefire.
Homefire reworks Sophocles’s Antigone to tell the story of a British family caught up by ISIS. It is Shamsie's seventh novel.
The judges “chose the book which we felt spoke for our times … Home Fire is about identity, conflicting loyalties, love and politics. And it sustains mastery of its themes and its form. It is a remarkable book which we passionately recommend," according to The Guardian.
The prize is the United Kingdom’s most prestigious annual book award for fiction written by a woman and comes with a £30,000 prize (about $40,309 U.S.).
The other contenders were:
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Sight, by Jessie Greengrass
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Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward
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The Idiot, by Elif Batuman
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The Mermaid and Mrs. Hancock, by Imogen Hermes Gowar
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When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife, by Meena Kandasamy
You can read more about each book on the prize's website.
Founded in 1996, the prize was set up to celebrate excellence, originality, and accessibility in writing by women throughout the world.
It was known as the Orange Prize for Fiction between 1996 and 2012, and then as the Baileys Prize for Fiction until 2016.
Categories: Today in Books