Click cover to read a sample

How to be Both – 2015 Winner

Winner of Women’s Prize for Fiction 2015

How to be both is a novel all about art’s versatility. Borrowing from painting’s fresco technique to make an original literary double-take, it’s a fast-moving genre-bending conversation between forms, times, truths and fictions. There’s a renaissance artist of the 1460s. There’s the child of a child of the 1960s. Two tales of love and injustice twist into a singular yarn where time gets timeless, structural gets playful, knowing gets mysterious, fictional gets real – and all life’s givens get given a second chance.

“If Woolf and Joyce hadn’t both died in 1941, you might think they had a secret love-child called Ali Smith. She explores our humanity with the most beautiful poetic prose.” Shami Chakrabarti, 2015 Women’s Prize for Fiction Chair of Judges.

"Art makes nothing happen in a way that makes something happen."

Listen

Listen to the 2015 Chair of Judges Shami Chakrabarti interviewed on BBC Woman's Hour

Listen

Read

Discover the book with our brilliant bespoke reading guide

Download guide

Join in

Get involved in the #ReadingWomen conversation and help us choose our Winner of Winners

Join in

Podcast

Vick Hope, Caroline O'Donoghue and Daisy Buchanan discuss How to Be Both on our #ReadingWomen podcast

Listen to the podcast

2015 Shortlist

The Bees

The Bees

Laline Paull

A God in Every Stone

A God in Every Stone

Kamila Shamsie

How to be Both - 2015 Winner

Ali Smith

A Spool of Blue Thread

Anne Tyler

The Paying Guests

The Paying Guests

Sarah Waters

Outline

Outline

2015 Longlist

The Life of a Banana

The Life of a Banana

PP Wong

The Shore

The Shore

Sara Taylor

The Walk Home

The Walk Home

Rachel Seiffert

The Table of Less Valued Knights

The Table of Less Valued Knights

Marie Phillips

The Country of Ice Cream Star

The Country of Ice Cream Star

Sandra Newman

Station Eleven

Station Eleven

Emily St. John Mandel

Elizabeth is Missing

Elizabeth is Missing

Emma Healey

In the middle of a winter's night, a woman wraps herself in a blanket, picks up a pen and starts writing to an estranged friend. In answer to a question you asked a long time ago, she writes, and so begins a letter that calls up a shared past both women have preferred to forget. Without knowing if her friend, Butterfly, is even alive or dead, she writes night after night - a letter of friendship that turns into something more revealing and recriminating. By turns a belated outlet of rage, an act of self-defence, and an offering of forgiveness, the letter revisits a betrayal that happened a decade and a half before, and dissects what is left of a friendship caught between the forces of hatred and love. The thoughtfulness, intensity and sheer beauty of her writing in her first two novels, The Wilderness and All Is Song, brought Samantha Harvey both huge acclaim and many prize shortlistings. Those readers who loved those novels will fall on Dear Thief with relief and delight.

Dear Thief

Samantha Harvey

I Am China

I Am China

Xiaolu Guo

Aren't We Sisters?

Aren't We Sisters?

Patricia Ferguson

Crooked Heart

Crooked Heart

Lissa Evans

The Bees

The Bees

Laline Paull

A God in Every Stone

A God in Every Stone

Kamila Shamsie

How to be Both - 2015 Winner

Ali Smith

A Spool of Blue Thread

Anne Tyler

The Paying Guests

The Paying Guests

Sarah Waters

Outline

Outline

The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

The Girl Who Was Saturday Night

Heather O'Neill

Previous winners

2021

Piranesi

Susanna Clarke

2020

Hamnet

Maggie O'Farrell

2019

An American Marriage - 2019 Winner

Tayari Jones

2018

Home Fire - 2018 Winner

Kamila Shamsie

2017

The Power - 2017 Winner

Naomi Alderman

2016

The Glorious Heresies - 2016 Winner

Lisa McInerney

2015

How to be Both - 2015 Winner

Ali Smith

2014

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - 2014 Winner

Eimear McBride

2013

May We Be Forgiven - 2013 Winner

A.M. Homes

2012

The Song of Achilles - 2012 Winner

Madeline Miller

2011

The Tiger's Wife - 2011 Winner

Téa Obreht

2010

The Lacuna - 2010 Winner

Barbara Kingsolver

2009

Home - 2009 Winner

Marilynne Robinson

2008

The Road Home - 2008 Winner

Rose Tremain

2007

Half of a Yellow Sun - 2007 Winner

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

2006

On Beauty - 2006 Winner

2005

We Need to Talk About Kevin - 2005 Winner

Lionel Shriver

2004

Small Island

Andrea Levy

2003

Property - 2003 Winner

Valerie Martin

2002

Bel Canto - 2002 Winner

Ann Patchett

2001

The Idea of Perfection - 2001 Winner

Kate Grenville

2000

When I Lived in Modern Times - 2000 Winner

Linda Grant

1999

A Crime in the Neighborhood - 1999 Winner

Suzanne Berne

1998

Larry’s Party - 1998 Winner

Carol Shields

1997

Fugitive Pieces - 1997 Winner

Anne Michaels

1996

A Spell of Winter - 1996 Winner

Helen Dunmore

The Women's Prize Podcast

Tune into host Vick Hope and a line-up of incredible guests on our weekly podcast full of unmissable book recommendations.

Win our 2022 shortlist!

Join the Women's Prize newsletter for a chance to win a stack of all 6 brilliant 2022 shortlisted books, and get the latest book news, author features and exciting competitions! (You can unsubscribe at any time)*

Never see this message again.