- Barbara Kingsolver Wins Women’s Prize for Fiction
- Judges’ Acclaim for Demon Copperhead
- Women’s Prize for Fiction Recognizes Outstanding Female Authors
Barbara Kingsolver won this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction for Demon Copperhead, a contemporary retelling of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield.
Kingsolver, who previously won for The Lacuna in 2010, is the first author to win the honor twice.
She stated that Dickens wrote his novel in 1850 “to protest the ravages of poverty on the children of his time” and added, “I wrote mine for the same reason.”
The judges described it as “a monumentally powerful and significant book.”
Demon Copperhead relocates the story from Victorian England to the contemporary Appalachian Mountains of Virginia to tell the tale of a caravan park-born child who navigates foster care, labor exploitation, addiction, love, and loss.
Louise Minchin, who presided over the Women’s Prize judging panel, stated that the decision was “unanimous.”
At the pinnacle of her career
Minchin described the novel as “an exposé of contemporary America, its opioid crisis, and the detrimental treatment of impoverished and maligned [rural] communities.”
“The writing is brilliant and visceral; the author is at the top of her game. We were all profoundly moved by Demon’s delicate optimism, resilience, and determination in the face of overwhelming odds.”
For her tenth novel, Kingsolver stated that it was “challenging and also enjoyable” to transfer Victorian characters and situations to the present day.
On Wednesday, at a ceremony in London, Minchin awarded the £30,000 prize to the American author. Earlier this year, Demon Copperhead also won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.
The Women’s Prize, now in its 28th year, recognizes “outstanding, ambitious, original fiction” written in English by female authors from around the globe.
