Women's Prize for Fiction 2024: Complete list of winners

The Women’s Prize for Fiction announced its 2024 winner with Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan, a sweeping novel that traces the intimate costs of Sri Lanka’s civil war through the eyes of a young woman navigating survival, love, and identity across decades and continents. Ganeshananthan’s debut novel captures the emotional architecture of displacement and memory with such precision that it’s difficult to believe this is her first work of fiction—the novel earned recognition for its unflinching exploration of how historical trauma reshapes individual lives and family bonds. The Women’s Prize for Fiction, one of the most prestigious awards recognizing works by women writers, continues its mission of championing exceptional female voices, and this year’s selection reflects the prize’s commitment to stories that expand our understanding of contemporary experience.

What makes Ganeshananthan’s win particularly resonant is how Brotherless Night joins a lineage of prize-winning works that grapple with the personal dimensions of political upheaval. The novel doesn’t treat war as distant historical backdrop but rather as the living, breathing reality that shapes every relationship and choice. Readers who follow the Women’s Prize for Fiction year after year recognize that the award often lifts up narratives that might otherwise remain on the margins of mainstream literary discourse—stories centered on women’s inner lives during moments of extraordinary crisis, told with both lyrical beauty and unflinching honesty.

Fiction

• Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan