Book fans, take note – your summer reading list has landed. The finalists for the international Women's Prize for Fiction have been announced and we want to read them all.
Heavyweights Margaret Atwood, Madeleine Thien and Sarah Perry are among the 16 authors longlisted for the £30,000 prize, the BBC reported.
Refinery29 favourite Naomi Alderman also made the cut for her gripping novel The Power, which imagines a world were women can electrocute and kill at will.
The shortlist will be announced on 3rd April before the winner is revealed on 7th June.
Atwood is nominated for the Shakespeare-inspired novel Hag-Seed, while Perry is up for The Essex Serpent, which won her the Waterstones Book of the Year award in 2016.
On this year’s judging panel are Aminatta Forna, Katie Derham, Tessa Ross, Sam Baker and Sara Pascoe.
Women from around the world are eligible for the English-language prize, which is one of the most prestigious in the literary world. This year the longlist includes writers from Nigeria, South Africa, Canada, the US, the UK and Ireland, reported the BBC.
Last year’s winner was Lisa McInerney, who won for her debut novel The Glorious Heresies, set in post-crash 20th-century Ireland.
This is the final year the prize will be sponsored by Baileys, which has put its name to the award since 2014. Between 1996-2006 it was known as the Orange Prize For Fiction and was the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction between 2007-08.
The longlist in full:
• Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo
• The Dark Circle by Linda Grant
• The Lesser Bohemians by Eimear McBride
• The Sport of Kings by C.E. Morgan
• The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
• The Lonely Hearts Hotel by Heather O'Neill
• The Essex Serpent by Sarah Perry
• First Love by Gwendoline Riley
• Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
• The Gustav Sonata by Rose Tremain
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