Arundhati Roy and Lyse Doucet lead ‘exceptional’ Women’s prize for nonfiction shortlist

Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me and Doucet’s The Finest Hotel in Kabul are joined by books on exile by Ece Temelkuran and Judith Mackrell and an ode to the arts by Daisy Fancourt

Arundhati Roy, Lyse Doucet and Judith Mackrell are among the writers shortlisted for this year’s Women’s prize for nonfiction.

Jane Rogoyska, Ece Temelkuran and Daisy Fancourt are also in contention for the £30,000 prize, launched in 2024 to address the persistent gender imbalance in UK nonfiction prize winners.

Booker prize-winning novelist and political activist Roy has been chosen for her memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, an exploration of identity, motherhood and the making of a writer, which Amit Chaudhuri described as “utterly absorbing” in his Guardian review.

BBC chief international correspondent Doucet is recognised for The Finest Hotel in Kabul, a people’s history of Afghanistan told through the shifting fortunes of the InterContinental hotel in the capital, praised in the Guardian as “witty, observant and sometimes heartbreaking”.