Women's Prize for Fiction 2018 Winner Announced!

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie has been named as the winner of the £30,000 Women's Prize for Fiction.  

The Women’s Prize for Fiction is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award for fiction written by a woman. Founded in 1996, the Prize was set up to celebrate excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women throughout the world.

Home Fire, follows Isma, a young woman now free from the responsibility of raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother’s death. She resumes a dream long deferred – studying in America. But she can’t stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London, or their brother, Parvaiz, who’s disappeared in pursuit of his own dream – to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew.

Then Eamonn enters the sisters’ lives. Handsome and privileged, he inhabits a London worlds away from theirs. As the son of a powerful British Muslim politician, Eamonn has his own birthright to live up to – or defy. The fates of these two families are inextricably, devastatingly entwined in this searing novel that asks: what sacrifices will we make in the name of love?

Kamila Shamsie is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and was named a Granta Best of Young British Novelist in 2013.  She grew up in Karachi and now lives in London and has written seven novels:

• In the City by the Sea (shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize)
• Salt and Saffron
• Kartography (also shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize)
• Broken Verses
• Burnt Shadows (shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction) 
• A God in Every Stone, which was shortlisted for the Baileys Prize, the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.
• Home Fire (winner of this award, longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017 and Costa Novel Award 2017)

This year’s judges were Sarah Sands (Chair), Anita Anand, Katy Brand, Catherine Mayer and Imogen Stubbs. 

2018 Chair of Judges Sarah Sands, said: “This was a dazzling shortlist, it had depth and richness and variety. We were forcibly struck by the quality of the prose. Each book had its champions. We loved the originality of mermaids and courtesans, we were awed by the lyrical truth of an American road trip which serves as a commentary of the history of race in America, we discussed into the night the fine and dignified treatment of a woman’s domestic abuse, we laughed over a student’s rite of passage and we experienced the truth of losing a parent and loving a child. In the end we chose the book which we felt spoke for our times. Home Fire is about identity, conflicting loyalties, love and politics. And it sustains mastery of its themes and its form. It is a remarkable book which we passionately recommend.”