Virago Icons: International Women’s Day 2025
This International Women’s Day we are celebrating a small selection of Virago Icons: ten prize winning books and authors – perfect reading any day of the year.
VIRAGO ICONS
The Blind Assassin, Margaret Atwood: winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2000
Sexually explicit for its time, The Blind Assassin describes a risky affair in the turbulent thirties between a wealthy young woman and a man on the run. During their secret meetings in rented rooms, the lovers concoct a pulp fantasy set on Planet Zycron. As the invented story twists through love and sacrifice and betrayal, so does the real one; while events in both move closer to war and catastrophe. By turns lyrical, outrageous, formidable, compelling and funny, this is a novel filled with deep humour and dark drama.
The Friend, Sigrid Nunez: Winner of the National Book Award in 2018
When a woman unexpectedly loses her lifelong best friend and mentor, she finds herself burdened with the unwanted dog he has left behind. Her own battle against grief is intensified by the mute suffering of the dog, a huge Great Dane, and by the threat of eviction: dogs are prohibited in her apartment building.
Isolated from the rest of the world, increasingly obsessed with the dog’s care, determined to read its mind and fathom its heart, she comes dangerously close to unravelling. But while troubles abound, rich and surprising rewards lie in store for both of them.
Fingersmith, Sarah Waters: winner of the CWA Historical Dagger, Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize
Fingersmith is an extraordinary, ingenious tale of fraud, insanity and secrets.
London 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves – fingersmiths – under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby and her ‘family’. But from the moment Sue draws breath, her fate is linked to that of another orphan growing up in a gloomy mansion not too many miles away.
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson: winner of Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005
In 1956, towards the end of Reverend John Ames’s life, he begins a letter to his young son: ‘I told you last night that I might be gone sometime… You reached up and put your fingers on my lips and gave me that look I never in my life saw on any other face besides your mother’s. It’s a kind of furious pride, very passionate and stern. I’m always a little surprised to find my eyebrows unsinged after I’ve suffered one of those looks. I will miss them.’
Palmares, Gayl Jones: Pulitzer Prize Finalist, 2022 and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize
From plantation to plantation, Almeyda, a young slave girl, hears whispers, rumours of Palmares, a hidden settlement where fugitive slaves live free. But can this promised land exist? And what price is paid for ‘freedom’?
In Palmares, Gayl Jones brings to life a world full of unforgettable characters, reimagining extraordinary historical events and combining them with mythology and magic. The result is a sweeping saga spanning a quarter of a century. Of Gayl Jones, the New Yorker noted, ‘[Her] great achievement is to reckon with both history and interiority, and to collapse the boundary between them.’ Like nothing else before it, Palmares embodies this gift.
Ghostroots, ‘Pemi Aguda: finalist for the 2024 National Book Awards, Shortlisted for the Caine Prize for African Writing, longlisted for the Pen Faulkner Award
The Lagos of these twelve sinister and beguiling stories is multi-faceted, peopled by Pentecostal Christians and exasperated atheists; by tight-knit extended families and struggling single fathers. Here are characters cursed by guilt, bound by the ties of ancestors and community; or enchanted by the allure of mysticism and would-be prophets. There are gossips and party girls – and a schoolboy followed home by a group of tribal masquerades, cloaked in feathers and twinkling beads. Yes, his mother has warned him not to bring strangers home, but he is sure she will understand . . .
Exploring the dark borders between psychology and superstition, these feverishly imaginative stories of trauma, betrayal, terror and love lay bare the forces of myth, tradition, gender, sexuality and modernity in Nigerian society. Powered by a deep empathy, and glinting with humour and insight, they announce a major new literary talent.
The Last Girl, Nadia Murad: Joint Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize
Nadia Murad is a courageous young Yazidi woman who has endured unimaginable tragedy and degradation through sexual enslavement to ISIS. Six of Nadia’s brothers were killed, and her mother soon after, their bodies swept into mass graves. But she has fought back.
This inspiring memoir takes us from her peaceful childhood in Iraq through loss and brutality to safety in Germany. She is the subject of Alexandria Bombach’s film On Her Shoulders, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and the first Goodwill Ambassador for the Dignity of Survivors of Human Trafficking of the United Nations. Courage and testimony can change the world: this is one of those books.
A Woman of No Importance, Sonia Purnell: Winner of the Plutarch Prize for Best Biography
In September 1941, a young American woman strides up the steps of a hotel in Lyon, Vichy France. Her papers say she is a journalist. Her wooden leg is disguised by a determined gait and a distracting beauty. She is there to spark the resistance.
By 1942 Virginia Hall was the Gestapo’s most urgent target, having infiltrated Vichy command, trained civilians in guerrilla warfare and sprung soldiers from Nazi prison camps. The first woman to go undercover for British SOE, her intelligence changed the course of the war – but her fight was still not over.
This is a spy history like no other, telling the story of the hunting accident that disabled her, the discrimination she fought and the secret life that helped her triumph over shocking adversity.
Good for a Girl, Lauren Fleshman: Winner of the William Hill Prize
Lauren Fleshman was of the most decorated collegiate athletes of all time and a national champion as a pro, before becoming a coach for elite young female runners. Every step of the way, she has seen how our sports systems fail young women and girls as much as empower them.
Part memoir, part manifesto, Good for a Girl is Fleshman’s story of falling in love with running as a girl, battling devastating injuries and self-doubt, and daring to fight for a better way for female athletes.
Womb, Leah Hazard: winner of Scottish Book of the Year
The womb is the most miraculous organ in the body – with the power to bring life or cause death; to yield joy or pain – yet most of us know almost nothing about it.
In this book, midwife and bestselling author Leah Hazard sets out on a journey to explore the rich past, complex present and dynamic future of the uterus. She speaks to the Californian doctor who believes women deserve a period-free life; walks in the footsteps of the Scottish woman whose Caesarean section changed childbirth forever; uncovers America’s long history of forced and coercive sterilisation; observes uterine transplant surgery in Sweden and takes a very personal dive into the world of ‘womb wellness’.
