Ruth Ozeki on the Women’s Prize shortlist

27 April 2022

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Update 17 June 2022: Ruth won!

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Congratulations to Ruth Ozeki, whose wonderful novel The Book of Form & Emptiness has made it to the shortlist of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, announced today!

Ruth has previously been shortlisted for the Booker Prize for A Tale for the Time Being (a new edition of which publishes on our Canons list in June). The Book of Form & Emptiness is a story about fourteen-year-old Benny Oh, who (following the death of his father) begins to hear the voices of all the things around him: some pleasant, some anxious, some angry, some sad.

Mary Ann Sieghart, the chair of the judges for this year’s Women’s Prize calls The Book of Form & Emptiness “an extrordinary achievement. It's funny, it's clever, it's original, it's philosophical: it's an incredibly enjoyable read.” Here is the shortlist in full:

— Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead
— Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason
— The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
— The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini
— The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak
— The Sentence by Louise Erdrich