Louise Erdrich among 6 finalists for literary Women's Prize

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails Sign up to our free breaking news emails Please enter a valid email address Please enter a valid email address SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Please try again later {{ /verifyErrors }} The 23rd novel by acclaimed American author Louise Erdrich and an adult fiction debut by Trinidadian stand-up comedian Lisa Allen-Agostini were named finalists on Wednesday for the 30,000-pound Women’s Prize for fiction. Erdrich’s “The Sentence” — set in a haunted Minneapolis bookstore — and Allen-Agostini’s Caribbean story of gender violence and liberation, “The Bread the Devil Knead,” are on a six-book shortlist for the prestigious British award. The finalists also include New Zealand author Meg Mason’s bold and funny novel about love and mental illness, “Sorrow and Bliss”; U.S.-Canadian writer Ruth Ozeki’s bibliophilic novel “The Book of Form and Emptiness”; Turkish-British author Elif Shafak’s Cyprus-set love story “The Island of Missing Trees”; and American writer Maggie Shipstead’s “Great Circle,” the story of a pioneering female aviator and her legacy.