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NHS doctor Rachel Clarke has been named the winner of this year’s Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction, with Yael van der Wouden picking up the award for Fiction for her debut novel.
A best-selling author and physician, Clarke previously published Your Life in my Hands (2017), which was a reflection on end of life care, while Dear Life (2020) was her account of working inside the NHS during the pandemic. Her 2021 book Breathtaking (2021) was adapted into an ITV drama in 2024.
Her fourth novel for which she won the award, The Story of a Heart tracks the moving history of heart transplants over a century of countless immunologists, nurses and scientists. The book is, in many ways, “a love letter to the NHS”.
Clarke, 52, took home the award at a ceremony held in Bedford Square Gardens, London, on Thursday 12 June.
Also feted at the event was Dutch author van der Wouden who won the Women’s Prize for Fiction with her book The Safekeep, about a girl who lives in her late parents house after the end of World War II. It is the 37-year-old’s first novel.
Both authors will receive a £30,000 prize each in recognition of their achievements.
Clarke worked as a journalist prior to her career in medicine, directing current affairs documentaries for broadcasters including Channel 4 and the BBC.
She began a medical degree at University College, London, at the age of 29 before transferring to Oxford for her clinical training. She graduated in 2009.
Alongside working in palliative care, Clarke has been a vocal campaigner for junior doctors. She began publicly speaking out against the government during the strikes of 2016, warning that then-health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s proposed seven-day NHS would significantly damage the service and the doctors and nurses who work within it.
Journalist Kavita Puri, chairwoman of the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction judges, said: “Clarke’s writing is authoritative, beautiful and compassionate. The research is meticulous, and the storytelling is expertly crafted. She holds this precious story with great care and tells it with dignity, interweaving the history of transplant surgery seamlessly.
“This is a book where humanity shines through on every page, from the selfless act of the parents who gift their daughter’s heart in the depths of despair, to the dedication of the NHS workers. It is unforgettable, and will be read for many years to come.”
Van der Wouden, born in Tel Aviv, Israel, to an Israeli mother and Dutch father, lives in the Netherlands where she lectures in creative writing and comparative literature.
The Safekeep launched a nine-way bidding war between UK publishers when it was announced in 2023, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize the following year. Shelost to Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, a novel about a single day on the International Space Station.
Upon release, The Independent’s Robert McCrum called The Safekeep “an impressive debut whose strengths lie principally in mood”.
He praised van der Wouden’s ability to unfold her narrative “with some skill: half-finished sentences; weird asides; flashes of sinister emotion; inexplicable exchanges; repressed allusions – a lot of space devoted to the unsaid, the unheard, and the unseen”.
Writer Kit de Waal, chairwoman of the judges for the Women’s Prize for Fiction, called the debut “a classic in the making” – a story to be “loved and appreciated for generations to come”.
“Books like this don’t come along every day,” concluded de Waal.
The Safekeep beat Good Girl by Aria Aber, All Fours by Miranda July, The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji, Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout, and Fundamentally by Nussaibah Younis.
The Women’s Prize for Fiction, which is now in its 30th year, was set up in 1995 in the wake of an all-male Booker prize shortlist in 1991. It has previously been won by authors including Zadie Smith, Ali Smith and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Last year’s winner was Brotherless Night by VV Ganeshananthan.
Shortlisted alongside forThe Story of a Heart in the Non-Fiction category were A Thousand Threads by Neneh Cherry, Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton, Agent Zo: The Untold Story of Courageous WW2 Resistance Fighter Elżbieta Zawacka by Clare Mulley, What the Wild Sea Can Be: The Future of the World’s Ocean by Helen Scales, and Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China by Yuan Yang.
The inaugural Non-Fiction prize was awarded to Naomi Klein last year for her political memoir Doppelganger, after research commissioned by the Women’s Prize Trust found that female non-fiction writers are less likely to win prizes or be reviewed than male authors.
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