British writer Susanna Clarke won the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction on September 8 for her fantasy novel Piranesi.

Clarke was awarded the 30,000-pound ($41,000) award for her second novel, which was published 16 years after her first, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, became a Hugo and World Fantasy Award winner. Piranesi likewise is nominated for both awards this year.

Novelist Bernardine Evaristo, who chaired the Women’s Prize judging panel, said Clarke had “created a world beyond our wildest imagination that also tells us something profound about what it is to be human.”

Clarke was one of two British authors among six finalists for the prize, founded in 1996 and open to female English-language writers from around the world.

This year’s other finalists were

• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
• No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
• Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi
• How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones
• Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller

[Thanks to David Brain for the story.]