‘Sorrow and Bliss’ shortlisted for 2022 Women’s Prize

Sydney-based Aotearoa New Zealand writer Meg Mason has been shortlisted for the £30,000 (A$52,800) Women’s Prize for Fiction for her second novel Sorrow and Bliss (Fourth Estate).

First published in Australia in late 2020, Sorrow and Bliss is set in London and Oxford, and follows a woman trying to make sense of the mental illness that’s plagued her for decades. The novel was published by HarperCollins in the US and Canada in February 2021 and by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK in June 2021. Rights have been sold in over 20 countries, with US production company New Regency acquiring film and television rights last year.

Mason’s book is among six novels shortlisted for the Women’s Prize. The full shortlist is as follows:

• The Book of Form and Emptiness (Ruth Ozeki, Canongate)
• The Bread the Devil Knead (Lisa Allen-Agostini, Myriad)
• Great Circle (Maggie Shipstead, Doubleday)
• The Island of Missing Trees (Elif Shafak, Viking)
• The Sentence (Louise Erdrich, Corsair)
• Sorrow and Bliss (Meg Mason, Fourth Estate).

The shortlist was chosen from a longlist of 16, which also included Aotearoa New Zealand writer Catherine Chidgey’s Remote Sympathy (Te Herenga Waka University Press).

The Women’s Prize for Fiction is presented annually to the best novel of the year written in English by a woman. Last year’s winner was Susanna Clarke for Piranesi (Bloomsbury).

The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on 15 June at a ceremony in London. For more information about the 2022 shortlist, visit the Women’s Prize website.

Category: Awards Local news