Skip to content

Piranesi wins the 2021 Women's Prize for Fiction

On 8 September 2021, Susanna Clarke won the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her second novel Piranesi.

At an awards ceremony hosted by novelist and Women’s Prize Founder Director, Kate Mossem the 2021 Chair of Judges, Bernardine Evaristo presented Susanna Clarke with the £30,000 prize, endowed by an anonymous donor, and the ‘Bessie’, a limited edition bronze figurine by Grizel Niven. The Women’s Prize for Fiction – one of the greatest annual, international celebrations of women’s creativity, now in its 26th year – honours outstanding, ambitious, original fiction written in English by women from anywhere in the world.

Chair of judges and novelist Bernardine Evaristo, says:

“We wanted to find a book that we’d press into readers’ hands, which would have a lasting impact. With her first novel in seventeen years, Susanna Clarke has given us a truly original, unexpected flight of fancy which melds genres and challenges preconceptions about what books should be. She has created a world beyond our wildest imagination that also tells us something profound about what it is to be human.”

Set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women to the widest range of readers possible, the Women’s Prize for Fiction is awarded for the best full-length novel of the year written by a woman and published in the UK between April and March the following year. Any woman writing in English – whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter – is eligible.

The judges for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction are: Elizabeth Day, podcaster, author and journalist; Vick Hope, TV and radio presenter, journalist and writer; Nesrine Malik, print columnist and writer; and Sarah-Jane Mee, news presenter and broadcaster. Bernardine Evaristo is this year’s chair.

Reading group reviews

Reading Women is a reading group set up by two avid fans of the Women’s Prize for Fiction during lockdown who wanted to read all the former prize winners. The group has a wide range of members, including TV producers, an NHS admin worker, a management consultant and more. Over the summer, they read Piranesi as part of a shadowing project with us.

Maddy: “Haunting and descriptive creation of an alternative world, which I could have kept on exploring! Left me thinking about its lofty halls for weeks afterwards, and how it drip-fed its mysteries to the reader.”

Mark: “Charming and beautifully told, a portrait of a parallel world where the key themes are kidnap, memory lost and regained, wide eyed wonder and radical self reliance. A story that considers the best and worst of human nature and in which curiosity vanquishes.”

Rowan: “I found this book utterly enchanting, and from the moment I started reading it I couldn’t put it down. I was torn between on the one hand desperately trying to unpick its central mystery, and on the other wishing to remain peacefully immersed in Clarke’s beautifully crafted world for as long as possible. Visually and conceptually it is a book that has stayed with me and that I hope to revisit time and time again.”

Stela: “Loved the concept of being trapped in another dimension of realty. A delightful read which asks more questions than it answers.”

Dave: “Piranesi is a mystery wrapped in an enigma hidden in a puzzle, but one with humanity at its core. Deeply philosophical and utterly gripping, Susanna Clarke explores the limits of human experience in all its beauty, sorrow and madness.”

Find out what reading groups thought of the other shortlisted books

Get involved

See the 2021 Prize longlist and shortlist. Discussion guides are available for reading groups for the shortlisted titles.

Share your thoughts with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram using #WomensPrize.

Keep up with all the latest news on the Women’s Prize website.

Want to make sure you never miss the latest reading group news? Sign up for our free monthly newsletter.

Comments

Log in or Sign up to add a comment

News

Radio 2 Book Club - Winter titles

The Winter season of the Radio 2 Book Club is out now, with brilliant brand-new fiction titles to discover. The BBC Radio 2 Book Club is on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. It features a wide range of titles and authors, recommending great reads from both new and much-loved writers, encouraging listeners to perhaps try out a genre they might not have read before, and share their opinions and insights on the titles and great reads they’re enjoying right now.

Resources

How to start a reading group

Interested in joining a reading group or starting one of your own? Download our quick guide to getting started. You can also download icebreaker questions to help get your discussion started, and a social media guide to show how you can share your reading with others online.

News

Discussion guides

We know how useful a discussion guide is for your book club meeting, so here you’ll find some recent guides provided by publishers. Free to download, you can use them to help choose your next book and guide your discussion.

View our other programmes