The Women's Prize for Fiction 2019

The Women’s Prize shortlist of 2019 was one of our favourites for years. Kate Williams, the chair of judges, has revealed that the panel deliberated for four hours to choose a winner. The eventual winner, Tayari Jones for her fourth novel An American Marriage, said “I think, in these times, we need women’s voices more than ever,” and we could not agree more.

Our money was on Madeleine Miller’s Circe, which regular readers know we were bowled over by last month. We felt that Miller’s scholarly classicism combined with her hyper-engaging prose style would once again prove a hit with the judges (her first novel, The Song of Achilles won what was then called the Orange Prize in 2012).

We also thought Pat Barker was in with a shout for Silence of the Girls, her 14th novel, which similarly offered a feminist slant on a Homeric epic.

Circe by Madeline Miller

If you went near a Waterstones in April, you will have seen stacks of Circe, a paperback with a beautifully intricate bronze and black cover. It was their book of the month and is also ours and – having now made the shortlist – may win this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. Anyone who has read Madeline Miller’s heady first novel Song of Achilles (2012) will know why her second book has appealed to such a broad range of readers. They will also be keen to devour it because Miller has once again turned a Homeric epic into, as the Independent said of her first book, “a sexy page-turner.”

Song of Achilles has now been published in 25 languages as well as winning the Women’s Prize for fiction (then called the Orange Prize). It has also helped shift perceptions of classical epics. When Miller wrote Song of Achilles, Margaret Atwood may have already written The Penelopiad (her 2005 retelling of The Odyssey from the viewpoint of Odysseus’s wife) but internationally bestselling feminist takes on classical epics were still a rarity.