2024 Women’s Prize Longlist

The 2024 Women’s Prize longlist was announced today and this year the list includes many debut novels. You can read more about the longlist on the Women’s Prize website. The full lists includes the following 16 books (click on the book link to purchase a copy from Amazon):

Hangman by Maya Binyam (debut): An enthralling and original first novel about exile, diaspora, and the impossibility of Black refuge in America and beyond. A man returns home to sub-Saharan Africa after twenty-six years in America. When he arrives, he finds that he doesn’t recognize the country or anyone in it. Thankfully, someone recognizes him, a man who calls him brother—setting him on a quest to find his real brother, who is dying.
In Defence of the Act by Effie Black: Are we more like a coffee bean, a carrot or an egg? What happens to us when we are boiled in the trials and tribulations of life? Jessica Miller is fascinated by the somewhat perplexing tendency of humans to end their own lives, but she secretly believes such acts may not be that bad after all. Or at least, she did. Jessica is coming to terms with her own relationships, and reflecting on what it means to be queer, when a single event throws everything she once believed into doubt. Can she still defend the act?
And then She Fell by Alicia Elliott: A mind-bending, razor-sharp look at motherhood and mental health that follows a young Indigenous woman who discovers the picture-perfect life she always hoped for may have horrifying consequences.
The Wren, the Wren by Anne Enright: ell McDaragh never knew her grandfather, the famed Irish poet Phil McDaragh. But his love poems seem to speak directly to her. Restless, full of verve and wit, twenty-two-year-old Nell leaves her mother Carmel’s home to find her voice as a writer and live a life of her choosing. Carmel, too, knows the magic of her Daddo’s poetry—and the broken promises within its verses. When Phil abandons the family, Carmel struggles to reconcile “the poet” with the man whose desertion scars Carmel, her sister, and their cancer-ridden mother. The Wren, the Wren brings to life three generations of women who contend with inheritances—of abandonment and of sustaining love that is “more than a strand of DNA, but a rope thrown from the past, a fat twisted rope, full of blood.” In sharp prose studded with crystalline poetry, Anne Enright masterfully braids a family story of longing, betrayal, and hope.
The Maiden by Kate Foster: Inspired by a real-life case and winner of the Bloody Scotland Pitch Perfect Award, Kate Foster’s The Maiden is a remarkable story with a feminist revisionist twist, giving a voice to women otherwise silenced by history.
Brotherless Night by V.V. Ganeshananthan: Set during the early years of Sri Lanka’s three-decade civil war, Brotherless Night is a heartrending portrait of one woman’s moral journey and a testament to both the enduring impact of war and the bonds of home.
Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville: A subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able – despite the cost – to make a life she could call her own.
Enter Ghost by Isabella Hammad: A stunning rendering of present-day Palestine, Enter Ghost is a story of diaspora, displacement, and the connection to be found in family and shared resistance. Timely, thoughtful, and passionate, Isabella Hammad’s highly anticipated second novel is an exquisite feat, an unforgettable story of artistry under occupation.
Soldier Sailor By Claire Kilroy: With her first novel in over a decade, Claire Kilroy takes readers deep inside the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love with a seismic shift in identity, Kilroy conjures the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of equality, autonomy, and creativity.
8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee (debut): Inspired by the story of Lee’s great aunt, one of the oldest women to escape alone from North Korea, 8 Lives of a Century Old Trickster consists of eight dark and spellbinding chapters that follow this remarkable character and her family as they struggle to survive during the most turbulent times of modern Korean history. Mirinae Lee’s trickster is a shapeshifter—throughout the course of these interconnected chapters she is a slave, an escape artist, a murderer, a terrorist, a spy, a lover, and a mother—a woman who must often choose the unthinkable to survive war and conquest in Korea. Her story is a beguiling, complex tale of love and survival that will keep you riveted—and speculating—until the very end thanks to Lee’s brilliant talent for sleight of hand.
The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord: The world is changing, and humanity must change with it. Rising seas and soaring temperatures have radically transformed the face of Earth. Meanwhile, Earth is being observed from afar by other civilizations . . . and now they are ready to make contact.
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo: An indelible coming-of-age story, Chetna Maroo’s first novel captures the ordinary and annihilates it with beauty. Western Lane is a valentine to innocence, to the closeness of sisterhood, to the strange ways we come to know ourselves and each other.
Nightbloom by Pease Adzo Medie: A riveting depiction of class and family in Ghana, a compelling exploration of memory, and an eye-opening story of life as an African-born woman in the United States, Nightbloom is above all a gripping and beautifully written novel attesting to the strength of female bonds in the face of societies that would prefer to silence women.
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan: When a 10-year-old child is suspected of a violent crime, her family must face the truth about their past in this haunting, propulsive, psychologically keen story about class, trauma, and family secrets 
River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure (debut): In a stunning reversal of the east-to-west immigrant narrative and set against China’s political history and economic rise, River East, River West is an intimate family drama and a sharp social novel. Alternating between Alva and Lu Fang’s points of view, this is a profoundly moving exploration of race and class, cultural identity and belonging, and the often-false promise of the American Dream.
A Trace of Sun by Pam Williams: Raef is left behind in Grenada when his mother, Cilla, follows her husband to England in search of a better life. When they are finally reunited seven years later, they are strangers – and the emotional impact of the separation leads to events that rip their family apart. As they try to move forward with their lives, his mother’s secret will make Raef question all he’s ever known of who he is. A Trace of Sun is, in part, inspired by the author’s own family experiences.

I’ve only read Western Lane although I have the Enright and Kilroy books on my TBR. I did not really care for Western Lane which I read for our 2023 Booker Prize panel. You can check our panel’s reviews for that book here: Western Lane.

Which books have you read? Were they worthy of making the list? Which books do you want to read? Which book is missing from this list? Which books do you think will make the shortlist?