2021 STELLA PRIZE WINNER.

Click the title to see the entire long and short lists.

Wow, because of commitments and reviews I have read virtually no books from the long and short lists this year and the winner has been announced. The winner of the 2021 Stella Prize goes to "THE BASS ROCK" by Evie Wyld. I intend to read it now as soon as I get some time.

Here is a synopsis -

Surging out of the sea, the Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, to each other.

In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life.

In the aftermath of the Second World War, Ruth navigates a new house, a new husband and the strange waters of the local community.

Six decades later, the house stands empty. Viv, mourning the death of her father, catalogues Ruth’s belongings and discovers her place in the past – and perhaps a way forward.

Each woman’s choices are circumscribed, in ways big and small, by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life. Intricately crafted and compulsively readable, The Bass Rock burns bright with anger and love.

Born in London in 1980, Evie Wyld grew up on her grandparents' sugar cane farm in New South Wales, Australia, although she spent most of her adult life in Peckham, south London.

Wyld is the author of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and Betty Trask Award-winning novel After the Fire, A Still Small Voice and All the Birds, Singing. In 2010 she was listed by The Daily Telegraph as one of the 20 best British authors under the age of 40. In 2011 she was listed by the BBC's Culture Show as one of the 12 Best New British Writers. In 2013 she was included on the once a decade Granta Best of Young British Novelists List. Her novels have been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Prize, The Miles Franklin Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Orange Award for New Writers, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, The Sky Arts Breakthrough Award, the James Tait Black Prize and The Author's Club Prize, and longlisted for the Stella Prize and the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction.

She took over from Nii Parkes as Booktrust's online "Writer in Residence" in 2010, before passing the baton on to Polly Dunbar.

Her second novel, All the Birds, Singing, was published in February 2013 and concerns an Australian sheep farmer working on an English hill farm. The book won the 2014 Miles Franklin Award in June 2014.