Orange Prize Longlist

Now in its sixteenth year, the Orange Prize for Fiction is the UK’s most prestigious annual book award for fiction written by a woman. The longlist has been announced and the titles are listed below. The shortlist will be announced on 12th April and then the winner be announced on 8th June. The winner will receive a cheque for £30,000 at a ceremony at London’s Royal Festival Hall.

Here is the longlist:

• Lyrics Alley by Leila Aboulela
• Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch
• Room by Emma Donoghue
• The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi
• Whatever You Love by Louise Doughty
• A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
• The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna
• The London Train by Tessa Hadley
• Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson
• The Seas by Samantha Hunt
• The Birth of Love by Joanna Kavenna
• Great House by Nicole Krauss
• The Road to Wanting by Wendy Law-Yone
• The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht
• The Invisible Bridge by Julie Orringer
• Repeat it Today with Tears by Anne Peile
• Swamplandia! by Karen Russell
• The Secret Lives of Baba Segi’s Wives by Lola Shoneyin
• The Swimmer by Roma Tearne
• Annabel by Kathleen Winter

2010 Orange Prize Winner

The 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction has been won by American author, Barbara Kingsolver for her novel The Lacuna.

Head of the judging panel, Daisy Goodwin said, “We chose ‘The Lacuna’ because it is a book of breathtaking scale and shattering moments of poignancy. It wasn’t a unanimous decision in the sense that we all said this was the winner, but I think it was fashionably consensual in that we all listened to each others’ point of view.” (Reuters)

“We decided to go for the book which aroused the most passion in the most people rather than settle for everyone’s second choice.”

The Lacuna beat the bookies favourite, Costa Book Awards shortlisted and 2009 Man Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Other shortlisted books were The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison, Black Water Rising by Attica Locke, A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore and The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey. (see previous Readers in the Mist post on the shortlist)

The Orange Prize is open to any full length novel, written in English by a woman of any nationality, provided that the novel is published for the first time in the United Kingdom between 1 April of the year before the prize is awarded and 31 March of the year in which the prize is awarded. Although the novel’s first UK publication must fall within these dates, it’s still eligible if it was previously published in English elsewhere.

Also announced were the Orange Award for New Writers which was won by Irene Sabatini’s novel, The Boy Next Door; the Orange/Harper’s Bazaar Short Story Competition which was won by Anna Lewis – entrants were asked to write a story of no more than 2,000 words on the theme of ‘The Face’ and Orange Prize Youth Panel Award which was awarded to Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces – this prize is part of the Orange Prize’s strategy to engage with younger readers and is awarded to the judges favourite novel from all the previous winners.

Orange Prize for Fiction shortlist

Last night the shortlist for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction was announced in London. Chair of the judges, Daisy Goodwin said: “The shortlist achieves the near impossible of combining literary merit with sheer readability . . . With a thriller, historical novels that reflect our world back to us, as well as a tragi-comedy about post 9/11 America, there is something here to challenge, amuse and enthral every kind of reader.”

The winner will be announced at the Royal Festival Hall on 9 June.

So here, courtesy of the Orange Prize for Fiction website (where you can find a video of the announcement) and the London Evening Standard, is the shortlist:

The Very Thought of You by Rosie Alison
Anna Sands, eight, is evacuated from wartime London to Yorkshire where she gets drawn into the unravelling relationship of the childless couple who offer to put her up.

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
At the time of the Mexican Revolution, Harrison Shepherd works for artists Diego Riviera and his wife Frida Kahlo before violent upheavals send him to America where he finds himself torn between two nations.

Black Water Rising by Attica Locke
Saving a distressed woman from drowning in the Houston bayou, Jay Porter opens a Pandora’s Box which ensnares him in a murder investigation that could put his own life and work in danger.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Blacksmith’s son Thomas Cromwell rises to become the powerful adviser to Henry VIII and the fixer of his desire for the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Wolf Hall has already won the Man Booker Prize and was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award.

A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore
Just after the September 11 attacks, a Midwestern farmer’s daughter takes a job as part-time nanny to a couple and gets drawn into their complicated lives.

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey
George and Sabine settle in Trinidad and rub along in marriage until George discovers unsent letters revealing Sabine’s hopes and fears.

Also announced earlier in the month was the Orange Award for New Writers 2010 shortlist which includes three novels :

The Book of Fires by Jane Borodale
The Boy Next Door by Irene Sabatini
After The Fire, A Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld

Orange Prize Longlist

Now in its 15th year, the Orange Prize for Fiction celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing. Any woman writing in English, whatever her nationality, country of residence, age or subject matter, is eligible.

The longlist was announced overnight with the shortlist to follow on 20 April. The winner will be announced at a ceremony on 9 June, where the prize of £30,000 will be presented.

Author and TV producer Daisy Goodwin, chairwoman of the judges, said it was a “muscular and pleasurable” longlist.

“It was a tough judging process as there was a particularly strong range of books submitted from all over the world,” she said. However, Goodwin also complained about the depressing subject matter of many of the entrants asying she was unprepared for a new problem: the barrage of “misery literature” that came her way. So many of the 129 books entered for the prize dealt with the subjects of bereavement, child abuse and rape that, she said yesterday, “I felt like a social worker by the end of it.” (Read more here or watch the YouTube video of Daisy Goodwin talking about reading 129 novels in 3 months and the longlist meeting)

Also on the judging panel are rabbi, author and broadcaster Baroness Neuberger; novelist and critic Michele Roberts; journalist Miranda Sawyer; and British Vogue editor Alexandra Shulman.

Below is the longlist. On the Orange Prize Longlist web page you can read a synopsis and author information for each book and at The Guardian you can see each book cover with information about the book.

• Rosie Alison – The Very Thought of You
• Eleanor Catton – The Rehearsal
• Clare Clark – Savage Lands
• Amanda Craig – Hearts and Minds
• Roopa Farooki -The Way Things Look to Me
• Rebecca Gowers – The Twisted Heart
• MJ Hyland – This is How
• Sadie Jones – Small Wars
• Barbara Kingsolver – The Lacuna
• Laila Lalami – Secret Son
• Andrea Levy – The Long Song
• Attica Locke – Black Water Rising
• Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall
• Maria McCann – The Wilding
• Nadifa Mohamed – Black Mamba Boy
• Lorrie Moore – A Gate at the Stairs
• Monique Roffey – The White Woman on the Green Bicycle
• Amy Sackville – The Still Point
• Kathryn Stockett – The Help
• Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger

And just for a bit of fun, Movie Line has awarded their Most Orange Prize – go and find out what it’s all about.

And Is an orange called an orange because it’s orange, or is orange orange because of the orange? Which came first – the fruit or the colour? That is the question being posed in Notes and Queries, again in The Guardian.