Discover the six books shortlisted for the 2026 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction!
Thangam Debbonaire, Chair of Judges, said of the list:
'Our shortlist shows the power and necessity of women’s writing at a time when recent statistics suggest a decline in non-fiction print sales in the UK. These books are an urgent antidote to mis- and dis-information, written with high standards of scholarship. They offer rich and original insights, in what often feels like a fragmented and uncertain world. They are six books of authority, told with humanity.'
The Women's Prize for Non-Fiction was first awarded in 2024, as a partner to the long-running Women's Prize for Fiction, to address the systematic underrepresentation of women's voices in published nonfiction. You can read more about the prize and its mission within the landscape of publishing and literary criticism here.
The Finest Hotel in Kabul
Lyse Doucet
In 1969, the luxury Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul opened its doors – a glistening white box, high on a hill, that reflected Afghanistan's hopes of becoming a modern country, connected to the world.
Lyse Doucet first checked into the Inter-Continental on Christmas Eve 1988. In the decades since, she has witnessed a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban, all from within its increasingly battered walls. The Inter-Con has never closed its doors.
Now, she weaves together the experiences of the Afghans who have kept the hotel running to craft a richly immersive history of their country. It is the story of Hazrat, the septuagenarian housekeeper; of Abida, who became the first female chef after the fall of the Taliban in 2001; and of Malalai and Sadeq, the twenty-somethings who seized every opportunity offered by two decades of fragile democracy – only to see the Taliban come roaring back in 2021.
Through these intimate portraits of Afghan life, the story of a hotel becomes the story of a people.
Art Cure
Daisy Fancourt
Many of us consider making and consuming art to be a hobby, or even a luxury. But what if arts engagement – from classical music to salsa, poetry to pop concerts, galleries to graffiti – was in fact one of our most powerful tools for unlocking health and happiness?
What if art could help you live longer – and even save your life?
In Art Cure, world-leading expert and award-winning scientist Professor Daisy Fancourt reveals the life-changing power of the arts, including how:
- Songs support the architectural development of children's brains
- Creative hobbies help our brains to stay resilient against dementia
- Visual art and music act just like drugs to reduce depression, stress, and pain
- Dance builds new neural pathways for people with brain injuries
- Going to live music events, museums, exhibitions, and the theatre decreases our risk of future loneliness and frailty
- Engaging in the arts improves the functioning of every major organ system in the body
And, perhaps most importantly, how art helps us not only to survive, but to thrive and flourish.
Artists, Siblings, Visionaries
Judith Mackrell
In many ways they were polar opposites …
Augustus was the larger of the two; vivid, volatile and promiscuous, he was a hero among romantics and bohemians, celebrated as one of the great British talents of his generation.
As a woman, Gwen's place in the art world was smaller and harder, and her private way of working and reserved nature meant it was only long after her death that her gift was fully acknowledged.
In Artists, Siblings, Visionaries Mackrell tells the remarkable stories of these immensely talented siblings, both of whose experiments with form and colour created some of the most exciting work of the early twentieth century.
Available 28 April
Hotel Exile
Jane Rogoyska
The Hotel Lutetia is a Paris institution, the only 'grand' hotel on the city's bohemian Left Bank. Ever since it opened, it has served as a meeting place for artists, musicians and politicians.
In the 1930s the Hotel Lutetia attracted intellectuals and political activists, forced to flee their homes when Hitler came to power, who met here with the hope of forming an alternative government. But when war came, Paris was occupied, and the hotel became the headquarters of the German military intelligence service – and the centre of their operation to root out enemies of the Reich. In 1945, the Lutetia was requisitioned once more, this time transformed into a reception centre for deportees returning from concentration camps.
Hotel Exile is about what happens on the edges of a war. At its heart are three groups of people connected to a place, to one another, and to the dark ideology which dictates the course of their lives.
Mother Mary Comes To Me
Arundhati Roy
Arundhati Roy’s first work of memoir, this is a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is, shaped by circumstance, but above all by her complex relationship to the extraordinary, singular mother she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
Born out of the onrush of memories and feelings provoked by her mother Mary’s death, this is the astonishing, often disturbing and surprisingly funny memoir of the Arundhati Roy’s life, from childhood to the present, from Kerala to Delhi.
With the scale, sweep and depth of her novels, The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and the passion, political clarity and warmth of her essays, this book is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace – a memoir like no other.
Nation of Strangers
Ece Temelkuran
Nation of Strangers aims to open a global conversation about our contemporary understanding of home, in the way How to Lose a Country did for the global rise of Fascism and Together for the progressive politics of emotions as an antidote to new Fascism.
The book will define the identity of the 'homeless' beyond the cliches of victim and survivor. With a view of carving out from her personal 'homeless' experience, it will lay out the morality of survival. This specific knowledge will come to benefit everyone in the twenty-first century since even the most settled among us have to adapt to frequent, unpredictable changes.
However, Nation of Strangers will not be a survival manual. It will be a book that will show how we can live beautifully and humanely.
The winners of the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction and the Women's Prize for Fiction will be announced at a ceremony in London on Thursday 11 June. In the meantime, you can revisit the nonfiction longlist, and keep an eye out for the fiction shortlist, which will be announced on 22 April!
