The Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction (previously known as the Orange Prize) has long been the literary award I watch most closely. I find it distinctive in that it's the only literary award I know that is limited to women. At the same time, I celebrate the amazing diversity of the nominees--this year, for example, the long list includes novels by twenty authors from seven different countries. Eight of the women are first-time novelists; of the remaining twelve, eight have been on the Orange long list previously. As always, I look at this list and see authors and novels I've never heard of before, yet would love to read. But I've committed myself to read the books I already own, rather than buying new ones. I have several Orange nominees from years past on my shelf, including the 2004 winner, Small Island by Andrea Levy. The urge to buy each and every one of these novels is quelled (somewhat) by the fact that I own, and am currenly reading, The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai.
Anyway, have a look at the long list:
- Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Fourth Estate)
- Poppy Shakespeare by Clare Allan (Bloomsbury)
- Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk (Faber)
- The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai (Hamish Hamilton)
- Peripheral Vision by Patricia Ferguson (Solidus)
- Over by Margaret Forster (Chatto & Windus)
- The Dissident by Nell Freudenberger (Picador)
- When to Walk by Rebecca Gowers (Canongate)
- A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo (Chatto & Windus)
- The Observations by Jane Harris (Faber)
- Carry Me Down by MJ Hyland (Canongate)
- The Girls by Lori Lansens (Virago)
- Alligator by Lisa Moore (Virago)
- What Was Lost by Catherine O'Flynn (Tindal Street Press)
- The Tenderness of Wolves by Stef Penney (Quercus)
- Careless by Deborah Robertson (Sceptre)
- Afterwards by Rachel Seiffert (Heinemann)
- Ten Days in the Hills by Jane Smiley (Faber)
- Digging to America by Anne Tyler (Chatto & Windus)
- The Housekeeper by Melanie Wallace (Harvill Secker)
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