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Orange Short List Announced

The Orange Prize for Fiction‘s short list, announced at the London Book Fair yesterday, includes three debuts and one second novel. Of the debuts, Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife, has already received a great deal of media attention (need we mention, again, that Obreht is the youngest of the New Yorker‘s best 20 writers under 40?) and has appeared on the NYT best seller list. The UK bookies’ favorite, however, is Emma Dongahue’s seventh novel, Room, which has been a best seller in both the UK and the US. Reporting on the award, the Independent writes that Donoghue is working on her next book, about a murder in San Francisco in the 1870’s. Says Donaghue, “It’s nice to be doing something completely different to Room; some writers get caught up in weird simulacrum of their previous novel and it’s good to be plunging into a completely different world,” The well-respected A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Eagan, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction, did not make the cut to the short list. The winner of the Prize, which is awarded to women writers from around the English-speaking world, will be announced on June 8th. The Orange Short List:

  • Nicole Krauss (American) – Great House, Norton, 10/12/2010, 9780393079982; (3rd novel); Krauss, along with Obreht, is one of The New Yorker‘s best 20 writers under 40. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award.
  • Téa Obreht (Serbian/American) – The Tiger’s Wife, Random, 3/8/11, 9780385343831 (1st novel)
  • Aminatta Forna (British/Sierra Leonean) – The Memory of Love, Atlantic Monthly, 1/4/11, 9780802119650 (2nd novel); Set in Sierra Leone, Booklist calls this a “stunning and powerful portrait of a country in the aftermath of a decade of civil war,” It also received admiring reviews from the San Francisco Chronicle and the NYT Book Review. Nancy Pearl interviewed the author on Seattle Cable TV.

  • Kathleen Winter (Canadian) – Annabel, 1/4/11, Grove Press, 9780802170828 (1st novel); the story of a hermaphrodite raised as a boy in a remote part of Canada, it was well-reviewed by Booklist, Kirkus, LJ and PW. It was also reviewed, with less enthusiasm, in the NYT Book Review.

  • Emma Henderson (British) – Grace Williams Says it Loud; not published in the U.S.; Sceptre in the UK (1st novel); a love story about two people who meet in a mental home.

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