A noticeable and important theme in this year’s shortlist is the feminist retellings of stories about women in history. Booker Prize Winner Barker retells the Iliad in The Silence of the Girls, while previous WPF winner Miller puts a twist on the witch who seduced Homer’s Odysseus in Circe , and Burns (also a Booker Prize winner) explores the story of a teenage girl during the Troubles with Milkman.

“The two tropes perpetually given to us in myths and stories are the beautiful, captive princess, and the evil witch who is too ugly for a man and therefore sits around trying to kill men,” said chair of the judges Kate Williams. Here, you get those completely turned on their heard and see they are living women, that the patriarchal system has written their stories for them, and what the truth could be.

Feminist retellings of women in history top the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019 shortlist