The 16-strong longlist for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction was revealed today (8 March), with five Penguin Random House titles making an appearance: H(a)ppy by Nicola Barker (William Heinemann); The Idiot by Elif Batuman (Jonathan Cape); The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar (Harvill Secker); Arundhati Roy‘s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Hamish Hamilton); and Kit de Waal's The Trick to Time (Viking).
Previously known as The Baileys Prize, the £30,000 award recognises “excellence, originality and accessibility in writing by women in English from throughout the world”. It was set up in 1996, following a year when there were no female authors shortlisted for the Booker prize, and chair of the judges Sarah Sands said that this year’s longlist demonstrated that the prize is not a “special pleading award” for writers who wouldn’t make it in other circumstances.
The shortlist will be announced on 23 April, with the winner announced on Wednesday 6 June. Here's some more information on our longlisted authors and titles: