Anne Enright, Kate Grenville and Isabella Hammad shortlisted for Women’s prize for fiction

British writer Hammad, whose father is Palestinian, was shortlisted for Enter Ghost, which follows actor Sonia as she travels from London to Haifa to visit her sister and joins an Arabic production of Hamlet in the West Bank.

The novel “takes you deep inside the protagonist’s experience while opening a wider window on to life for Palestinians and their exhausting day-to-day struggles”, wrote Holly Williams in the Guardian.

American writer VV Ganeshananthan, who is of Ilankai Tamil descent, was shortlisted for Brotherless Night, about a girl born in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, who dreams of becoming a doctor before civil war subsumes the country and those around her are swept up in violent political ideologies.

The book is “a work of history, biography, story and memoir, all fused into a novel that suggests the great potential of literary art as redeemer, healer and pathway to understanding”.

Fellow Irish writer Claire Kilroy also made the list with Soldier Sailor, an account of early motherhood in the form of an internal monologue addressed from mother to son.

The 10 longlisted titles that did not make the shortlist were Hangman by Maya Binyam, In Defence of the Act by Effie Black, And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott, The Maiden by Kate Foster, 8 Lives of a Century-Old Trickster by Mirinae Lee, The Blue, Beautiful World by Karen Lord, Western Lane by Chetna Maroo, Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie, Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan and A Trace of Sun by Pam Williams.