Women’s Day: A reader’s guide to the 16 books on the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025 longlist

The Women’s Prize for Fiction announced its 2025 longlist of 16 books on March 4. The shortlist will be announced on April 2, and the winner on June 12. The winning author will receive a cash prize of £30,000 and the “Bessie”, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven.

The Prize was established in 1996 and is awarded annually to the author of the best full-length novel of the year written in English and published in the UK.

The judging panel for the 2025 Prize is chaired by author Kit de Waal. She is joined by novelist Diana Evans; author Bryony Gordon; magazine editor Deborah Joseph; and musician Amelia Warner.

The sixteen longlisted novels are (all information sourced from publishers):

Good Girl, Aria Aber

In Berlin’s underground, where techno rattles buildings still scarred with the violence of the last century, nineteen-year-old Nila finds her tribe. In their company she can escape the parallel city that made her, the public housing block packed with refugees and immigrants, where the bathrooms are infested with silverfish and the walls outside are graffitied with swastikas.

Escaping into the clubs, Nila tries to outrun the shadow of her dead mother, once a feminist revolutionary; her catatonic, defeated father; and the cab-driver uncles who seem to idle...

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