Women’s Prize winners: ‘The Correspondent’ for Fiction, ‘The Finest Hotel in Kabul’ for Nonfiction

The winners of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Fiction and Nonfiction were announced on Thursday at a ceremony in London. Debut author Virginia Evans’s The Correspondent won in the Fiction category, while The Finest Hotel in Kabul: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet won in the Nonfiction category. Evans and Doucet will each receive £30,000 and the “Bessie”, a bronze statuette created by the artist Grizel Niven

The Women’s Prize for Fiction was established in 1996 to highlight and remedy the imbalance in coverage and reverence given to women writers versus their male peers. The Correspondent is composed of letters to friends, family and real-life authors. It is an uplifting and moving novel that confronts the hubris of youth with the wisdom of older age. Through her 73-year-old protagonist Sybil Van Antwerp’s connection with the written word, Evans considers the choices we make, those we regret, and unexpected second chances.

The chair of the fiction jury, Julia Gillard, said that The Correspondent “[is] a remarkable novel, with an exemplary combination of originality, excellence and accessibility. It is no mean feat to write a life in letters, but Evans makes this feel effortless, asking the reader to consider the choices we make, whilst elevating an ordinary life in the most heartfelt...

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