Three women have triumphed in this year’s Writers’ prize, formerly known as the Rathbones Folio prize, with poet Liz Berry winning the overall book of the year award, worth £30,000.
Berry won the £2,000 poetry prize as well as the overall award for her collection The Home Child, a novel-in-verse inspired by the poet’s great-aunt, who at 12 years old was forced to move from the Black Country to Canada as part of the British child migrant schemes.
The Home Child is a “profound act of witness to a long injustice, and a beautifully crafted conjuring of a life lived as truly as possible,” wrote Ruth Padel in her Guardian review.
Anne Enright won the fiction category, receiving £2,000, for The Wren, The Wren, a meditation on the love between mother and daughter. “Art as an illusion, love as a trap, the stranglehold of family ties: these are themes that Enright has already made her own,” wrote Elizabeth Lowry in a Guardian review. “They are not just reprised here but honed to an essential honesty.”
Observer art critic Laura Cumming won the £2,000 nonfiction prize for Thunderclap: A Memoir of Life and Art and Sudden Death, which connects the lives of Cumming, her painter father and the artists of the Dutch golden age. “Cumming writes with the sureness of carefully laid paint,” wrote Kathryn Hughes in her Guardian review. “This is not art historical scholarship of the academic kind – there are no footnotes or references to sources beyond her own feelings and intuition. It is an emotionally informed approach to art.”
The three winners were announced at the London book fair on Wednesday. It is the second year running that women have won all three categories.
Enright’s eighth novel was chosen over Zadie Smith’s The Fraud and Paul Murray’s The Bee Sting, which were also shortlisted. Berry’s The Home Child was selected over Self-Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant and Bright Fear by Mary Jean Chan, while Cumming won over A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell and Doppelganger by Naomi Klein.
Each of the shortlists “has reflected the exhilarating breadth and strength of the literary landscape in 2024”, said prize director Minna Fry.
“All of us on the prize have been touched by the story of Eliza Showell, Liz Berry’s great-aunt,” she added. “The Home Child is a tender novel in verse which shines a light on this little-known miscarriage of justice. It is a book anyone could read and everyone should.” Fry also said she was “particularly thrilled” for Cumming’s category win, this being her third shortlisting for the prize.
Last year, investment management company Rathbones stepped down as the prize sponsor, and in November the award announced its rebrand as the Writers’ prize. This year, the shortlist and winners were decided entirely by the Folio Academy, made up of more than 350 acclaimed writers – making the prize the only international, English-language award nominated and judged purely by other writers.
“This year, in our new incarnation as the Writers’ prize, we have been delighted by and deeply grateful for the engagement of the members of the Folio Academy,” said Fry. “We couldn’t be more thrilled with the result. From three impeccable shortlists emerged three worthy winners and, finally, a book of the year, offering readers the ultimate form of recommendation, from hundreds of the most expert readers one could ever hope for.”
All three winning books were published by Vintage, an imprint of Penguin, marking the first time a publishing imprint has won all three categories.
Previous winners of the overall prize include Colm Tóibín, Valeria Luiselli, Hisham Matar and George Saunders. In 2023, Margo Jefferson won for Constructing a Nervous System.
Browse all of the books shortlisted for the Writers’ prize 2024 at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
