Yael van der Wouden wins the Women's Prize for Fiction 2025
The Safekeep, a debut set in the Netherlands in 1961, won the thirtieth Women's Prize for Fiction and its £30,000 award.
Yael van der Wouden won the 2025 Women's Prize for Fiction for her debut novel The Safekeep, announced at a ceremony in Bedford Square Gardens, London, on 12 June 2025. She receives £30,000 and the bronze statuette known as the Bessie. It was the thirtieth year of the prize.
The Safekeep is set in the Netherlands in 1961 and centres on a woman's fraught relationship with her brother's new girlfriend, against the background of the country's post-war treatment of Dutch Jews. It had been shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
The judges were chaired by Kit de Waal. Van der Wouden's novel was chosen ahead of books by Miranda July and Elizabeth Strout, and three other debuts: Good Girl by Aria Aber, The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji and Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis.
A debut winning the prize is not unusual in itself, but a first novel that has now been recognised by two major prizes in consecutive years is. For writers, it shows that a quiet, historically grounded book can find a large readership without a big name behind it. It also shows how one shortlisting can carry a book to the next.
Sources: Women's Prize: Announcing the 2025 winners of the Women's Prizes; Kirkus Reviews: Winners of the 2025 Women's Prizes are revealed.