The shortlist for the 2018 Women’s Prize for Fiction has been announced. This Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing from throughout the world.

Sarah Sands, Chair of the judging panel, says: ‘The themes of the shortlist have both contemporary and lasting resonance encompassing the birth of the internet, race, sexual violence, grief, oh and mermaids. Some of the authors are young, half by Brits and all are blazingly good and brave writers’

The shortlisted titles are:

• The Idiot by Elif Batuman
• The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
• Sight by Jessie Greengrass
• When I Hit You: Or, A Portrait of the Writer as a Young Wife by Meena Kandasamy
• Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
• Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward

The 2018 winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction will be revealed on 6 June, and will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze known as a ‘Bessie’, created and donated by the artist Grizel Niven. Both are anonymously endowed.

Find out more about the Women’s Prize for Fiction here.