Maggie O’Farrell wins Women’s Prize for Fiction for Hamnet

Novel about death of Shakespeare’s son wins £30,000 award for Co Derry-born author

By Martin Doyle

Maggie O’Farrell has won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction for Hamnet, her novel inspired by the life and death of Shakespeare’s only son.

It was chosen from a shortlist that included the Booker Prize winning Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo and The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel , the concluding part of her double Booker winning Wolf Hall trilogy.

In a live digital awards ceremony to mark the prize’s 25th year, chair of judges Martha Lane Fox announced the winner live from London, while fellow judge Paula Hawkins presented the author with the £30,000 prize and the Bessie, a limited-edition bronze figurine, in Edinburgh, where the Coleraine, Co Derry- born writer now lives. Read the full story at The Irish Times.

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet was our August 2020 Book of the Month and is one of our current book club favorites. To read more about it — as well as everything else we’re loving — visit our Book of the Month and Books in the Bag pages.