So, it seems I have decided to do this crazy thing. Read all the winners and shortlisted books of the Women’s prize. Thankfully I have already read some over the years.
This will not be that easy for me – I don’t read so many ‘modern novels’ these days. (modern for me being anything after about 1990) There are also a few novels on this list I have never really fancied – so I may be setting myself up to fail.
No schedule – no time limit. Having discovered I had lots more tbr than I had remembered I will not be buying any more of them new – but adding them to my tbr as I find them accidentally in charity shops, or through bookcrossing.
1996 – A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore – (read)
Julia Blackburn, The Book of Colour
Pagan Kennedy, Spinsters
Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses
Anne Tyler, Ladder of Years (read – pre blog)
Marianne Wiggins, Eveless Eden
1997 – Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michael’s (TBR)
Margaret Atwood, Alias Grace (read pre blog)
Deirdre Madden, One by One in the Darkness
Jane Mendelsohn, I Was Amelia Earhart
Annie Proulx, Accordion Crimes
Manda Scott, Hen’s Teeth
1998 – Larry’s Party – Carol Shields
Kirsten Bakis, Lives of the Monster Dogs
Pauline Melville, The Ventriloquist’s Tale
Ann Patchett, The Magician’s Assistant
Deirdre Purcell, Love Like Hate Adore
Anita Shreve, The Weight of Water (read pre blog)
1999 – A Crime in the Neighbourhood – Suzanne Berne (read)
Julia Blackburn, The Leper’s Companions
Marilyn Bowering, Visible Worlds
Jane Hamilton, The Short History of a Prince
Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible (read pre blog)
Toni Morrison, Paradise
2000 When I lived in modern Times – Linda Grant
Judy Budnitz, If I Told You Once
Éilís Ní Dhuibhne, The Dancers Dancing
Zadie Smith, White Teeth (read pre blog)
Elizabeth Strout, Amy and Isabelle (TBR)
Rebecca Wells, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (read pre blog)
2001 The Idea of Perfection – Kate Granville (read pre blog)
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin (read pre blog)
Jill Dawson, Fred & Edie (TBR kindle)
Rosina Lippi, Homestead
Jane Smiley, Horse Heaven
Ali Smith, Hotel World
2002 Bel Canto – Ann Patchett (read)
Anna Burns, No Bones – (read pre blog)
Helen Dunmore, The Siege (read pre blog)
Maggie Gee, The White Family
Chloe Hooper, A Child’s Book of True Crime
Sarah Waters, Fingersmith (read)
2003 Property – Valarie Martin
Anne Donovan, Buddha Da (read pre blog)
Shena Mackay, Heligoland
Carol Shields, Unless (read pre blog)
Zadie Smith, The Autograph Man (read pre blog)
Donna Tartt, The Little Friend (read pre blog)
2004 Small Island – Andrea Levy (read pre blog)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Purple Hibiscus (read)
Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake (read)
Shirley Hazzard, The Great Fire
Gillian Slovo, Ice Road
Rose Tremain, The Colour
2005 We Need to talk about Kevin – Lionel Shriver (read – pre blog)
Joolz Denby, Billie Morgan – (read)
Jane Gardam, Old Filth
Sheri Holman, The Mammoth Cheese – (read pre blog)
Marina Lewycka, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian – (read pre blog)
Maile Meloy, Liars and Saints
2006 On Beauty – Zadie Smith – (read)
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love – (Read)
Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black
Ali Smith, The Accidental (TBR)
Carrie Tiffany, Everyman’s Rules for Scientific Living
Sarah Waters, The Night Watch – (read)
2007 Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – (read)
Rachel Cusk, Arlington Park
Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss – (read)
Xiaolu Guo, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers
Jane Harris, The Observations
Anne Tyler, Digging to America (read)
2008 The Road Home – Rose Tremain (TBR)
Nancy Huston, Fault Lines
Sadie Jones, The Outcast
Charlotte Mendelson, When We Were Bad
Heather O’Neill, Lullabies for Little Criminals
Patricia Wood, Lottery
2009 Home – Marilynne Robinson (TBR – Kindle)
Ellen Feldman, Scottsboro
Samantha Harvey, The Wilderness
Samantha Hunt, The Invention of Everything Else
Deirdre Madden, Molly Fox’s Birthday
Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows (Read)
2010 The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver (TBR – kindle)
Rosie Alison, The Very Thought of You
Attica Locke, Black Water Rising
Hilary Mantel, Wolf Hall (read)
Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs
Monique Roffey, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
2011 The Tiger’s Wife – Téa Olbrecht (TBR – kindle)
Emma Donoghue, Room – (read)
Aminatta Forna, The Memory of Love
Emma Henderson, Grace Williams Says it Loud
Nicole Krauss, Great House
Kathleen Winter, Annabel
2012 The Song of Achilles – Madeline Miller
Esi Edugyan, Half-Blood Blues (read)
Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz (read)
Georgina Harding, Painter of Silence
Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies
Ann Patchett, State of Wonder
2013 May we be Forgiven – A M Holmes
Maria Semple, Where’d You Go Bernadette
Hilary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies – (read)
Barbara Kingsolver, Flight Behaviour – TBR
Kate Atkinson, Life After Life
Zadie Smith, NW
2014 A Girl is a Half-formed thing – Eimear McBride (read)
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah – ( read )
Jhumpa Lahiri – The Lowland
Hannah Kent – Burial Rites
Audrey Magee, The Undertaking
Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch (read)
2015 How to be Both – Ali Smith
Laline Paull, The Bees
Anne Tyler, A Spool of Blue Thread (TBR kindle)
Sarah Waters, The Paying Guests (read)
Kamila Shamsie, A God in Every Stone (read)
Rachel Cusk, Outline
2016 The Glorious Heresies – Lisa McInerney
Cynthia Bond, Ruby
Anne Enright, The Green Road (read)
Elizabeth McKenzie, The Portable Veblen
Hannah Rothschild, The Improbability of Love
Hanya Yangihara, A Little Life
2017 The Power – Naomi Alderman (read)
Ayobami Adebayo, Stay With Me
Linda Grant, The Dark Circle
C. E. Morgan, The Sport of Kings
Gwendoline Riley, First Love
Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing
2018 – Home Fire – Kamila Shamsie (read)
Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing
Elif Batuman, The Idiot
Jessie Greengrass, Sight
Imogen Hermes Gowar, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock
Meena Kandasamy, When I hit you: or, a Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife
2019 – An American Marriage – Tayari Jones (read)
Anna Burns Milkman (read)
Pat Barker – Silence of the girls – (read)
Madeline Miller – Circe
Oyinkan Braithwaite – My Sister the Serial Killer (read)
Diana Evans – Ordinary People
2020 – Hamnet – Maggie O’Farrell (read)
Girl, Woman Other – Bernadine Evaristo (read)
The Mirror and the Light – Hilary Mantel
A Thousand Ships – Natalie Haynes
Dominicana – Angie Cruz
Weather – Jenny Offil
2021- Piranesi – Susan Clarke
Brit Bennett -The Vanishing Half (read)
Yaa Gyasi – Transcendent Kingdom – Yaa Gyasi
Cherie Jones – How the One Armed Sister Sweeps the House
Patricia Lockwood- No one is Talking about this
Clare Fuller – Unsettled Ground (TBR)
2022 – The Book of Form and Emptiness – Ruth Ozeki (TBR)
Lisa Allen-Agostini – The Bread the Devil Knead
Elif Shafak – The Island of Missing Trees (read)
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Maggie Shipstead – Great Circle
Louise Erdrich – The Sentence
heavenali 
I’m not familiar with this prize and see there are quite a few books I’ve enjoyed on the short lists, and quite a few more I’d like to read. Thanks for posting it. I’m sure I’ll refer to it now and then. I just want to mention that Fugitive Pieces is one of my favorite books and I hope it’s one you find to read soon. Fun project!
It has previously been called The Orange Prize and The Bailey’s Prize after their different sponsors. I think it is funded charitably now, so I hope the name of the Women’s Prize sticks. Fugitive Pieces was definitely one I hadn’t heard of before.
Looking over your page has made me realise just why this is my favourite UK literary prize. So many excellent books. I haven’t read all of them, and not all the ones I’ve read have been great but by far the majority have. Lots of treats in store, Ali. Looking forward to your reviews as and when you post them.
Thank you, yes I expect, as with any long project, there will be some I don’t like as much as others. But this list contains so many interesting names.
I’ve only read 11, which I can’t say surprises me really. I tend to add things I want to read to lists (so a few are on my wishlist) but then impulse buy when I’m actually in a book shop. I’ve read more from 2011 onwards so maybe there is also an age thing in it, or a blogging thing, I started my blog in 2010.
Yes perhaps, I must have missed the hype about some of the books before 2009 when I joined Twitter. I have been blogging since 2006 across two platforms, and I think I read more contemporary fiction in the 90s and early 2000s.
I certainly heard about more of them in the last decade-ish, and probably a lot of that is due to twitter and blogs
I think so.
How interesting that such a prize even exists. I think in France (and maybe in the whole French-speaking world) there is no prize specifically for fiction by women. The closest is a prize where the jury members are only women.
I’ve only read 3 of the books listed (both Krauss novels, and Atwood’s Oryx and Crake), but I enjoyed them all.
It’s interesting to read about why and how the prize was set up. You can read about that here.
https://www.womensprizeforfiction.co.uk/about/history
I’ve got Horse Heaven but I don’t think you’ll like it!
Ha, well I have looked it up, definitely not my usual thing but I’m not as worried about that one as some of the others.
I have missed this project page. It’s such a great list. Very useful. Thanks for compiling this.
Thank you, as you can see it might take a few years for me to get many of these ticked off, also I think there are a few I don’t really want to read.
I hadn’t realised you were doing this project. Most of the books from the early years of the prize are titles I’ve not heard of. It’s really only in the last 5 years that I’ve paid any attention to the prize…
Ha yes, well the longer time goes on, the more I wonder if I will ever do it. There are several titles I really don’t fancy and some I know nothing about. I suppose I have taken more notice of this prize since I joined Twitter, and embraced the world of booky social media.
That’s the same for me Ali, I hardly paid any attention to book prizes in the past