Women's Prize for Fiction: Two twin stories up for £30,000 book award

28 April 2021

Two family stories based around twins are among the novels shortlisted for this year's Women's Prize for Fiction.

Brit Bennett's The Vanishing Half follows the lives of two identical light-skinned black sisters. One starts a new life and passes for white.

Claire Fuller's Unsettled Ground is about 51-year-old twins whose world is upended when their mother dies.

Four other novels, including two debut works, are also in the running. The winner is announced on 8 September.

The shortlist:

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - this is her first novel since the critically-acclaimed Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which was published back in 2004. Piranesi is a mystery based on a man who lives alone in a house "with a labyrinth of halls", until one day, he realises he's not alone.
Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller is about betrayal and resilience, love and survival. It is a portrait of life on the fringes of society, based on the fallout when adult twins, Jeanie and Julius, face the death of their mother Dot.
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett is another book about twin sisters, inseparable as children, who ultimately choose to live in two very different worlds, one black and one white. It also happens to be a favourite of former US President Barack Obama.
Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi is a moving portrait of a family of Ghanaian immigrants ravaged by depression, addiction and grief, and about faith, science, religion and love. This is Gyasi's second novel. Her debut, Homecoming, was one of Oprah Winfrey's books of the year.
How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones is the Barbadian author's debut novel. This multi-generational family drama is set on Jones's home island and tackles the poverty and violence that lies beyond the beautiful beaches.
No-one is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood, another debut, is about a woman who builds up a huge following on social media and then travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. But is there life after the internet?

Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo, whose novel Girl, Woman, Other also made last year's Women's Prize shortlist, is the chair of the judges.

She said: "Fiction by women defies easy categorisation or stereotypes, and all of these issues grapple with society's big issues expressed through thrilling storytelling. We feel passionate about them and we hope readers will too."

The recipient of the prize will pick up £30,000 in prize money and a limited edition bronze figurine known as Bessie, created by the artist Grizel Niven.

Maggie O'Farrell won the prize last year for her novel Hamnet, based on the fictionalised life of Shakespeare's son.

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