Anne Enright and Claire Kilroy shortlisted for Women’s prize for fiction

Irish authors Anne Enright and Claire Kilroy have both been shortlisted for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction, making up for one third of the list, whose novels heavily features the theme of migration.

Enright, who has been shortlisted twice in 2012 and 2016 and longlisted in 2008 and 2020, is recognised again for her eighth novel The Wren, The Wren, which tells the family story of Nell, her mother Carmel and her famous late-grandfather, a brutal and talented poet.

Kilroy has also made the list with her novel Soldier Sailor, her first in 10 years. It is an account of a new mother’s love and her struggle for autonomy, in the form of an internal monologue addressed from mother to son.

The 6 spellbinding novels that make up the 2024 #WomensPrize for Fiction shortlist capture between their pages the enormous breadth of the human experience.

Congratulations to all the authors!@audibleuk @BaileysOfficial pic.twitter.com/DAA6HJVNuX

— Women's Prize (@WomensPrize) April 24, 2024

Joining those two authors on the shortlist are French-Chinese-American writer Aube Rey Lescure with her debut novel River East, River West, set against China’s economic boom and reversing the east-to-west immigrant narrative.

British-Palestinian writer Isabella Hammad, was shortlisted for Enter Ghost, tells the story of Sonia's travel from London to Haifa to join an Arabic production of Hamlet in the West Bank.

American writer VV Ganeshananthan, who is of Ilankai Tamil descent, was shortlisted for Brotherless Night, about a Ski Lankan girl’s dream of becoming a doctor among the violence of a civil war.

The final shortlisted author is Grenville, who won the Women’s prize in 2001 for The Idea of Perfection and is being recognised again for Restless Dolly Maunder, the reimagined story of Grenville's grandmother and her search for independence at the end on the 19th century.

The successful author will be awarded the prize of £30,000 and will be announced June 13 at the Women’s Prize Trust’s summer party in central London.