In a face-off against the likes of Hilary Mantel and Zadie Smith and four other strong nominees for the 2013 Women’s prize for fiction, A.M. Homes won the judges approval for her dark satirical novel May We be Forgiven. Mantel was, not surprisingly, the bookies’ favorite to take the prestigious award home, given that her entry for the award, Bring up the Bodies, had already claimed the 2012 Man Booker Prize.

The book was initially meant to be a short story but eventually evolved into its present form after Homes decided to entertain herself and write something she liked. In a particularly different take on contemporary American life and the American dream, she explores the perversion, violence and loopholes using dark humour.

The nominees for the 2013 Women’s Prize for Fiction were:

Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel

NW by Zadie Smith

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

May We be Forgiven by A.M. Homes

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver

Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple