The top literary prize organizers for women novelists have made a major breakthrough by including the recent winners of the Man Booker and Costa prizes in their list of nominees for this year’s honors. The judges for the Orange Broadband fiction award which comes with the prize money of £30,000 chose Kiran Desai’s novel ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ and Stef Penney’s ‘The Tenderness of Wolves’ with 18 other books. The award will be announced on June 6th.
The decision is being looked upon as a major one, as none of the awards, except the Booker, has listed a book which has won a rival award before. According to most of the seasoned judges, award holders are not included as such because no prize committee wants to come second. Even the booksellers and publishers prefer the huge sale figures which come from the awards to be shared between several titles. Kate Mosse, the founder and honorary director of Orange, said that the judges were this time told that they must not consider whether any of the titles had been successful in some other field. The list also features three authors who have previously been Orange-short listed.
The 20 contenders are:
Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Poppy Shakespeare Clare Allen
Arlington Park Rachel Cusk
The Inheritance of Loss Kiran Desai
Peripheral Vision Patricia Ferguson
Over Margaret Forster
The Dissident Nell Freudenberger
When to Walk Rebecca Gowers
A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers Xiaolu Guo
The Observations Jane Harris
Carry Me Down MJ Hyland
The Girls Lori Lansens
Alligator Lisa Moore
What Was Lost Catherine O’Flynn
The Tenderness of Wolves Stef Penney
Careless Deborah Robertson
Afterwards Rachel Seiffert
Ten Days in the Hills Jane Smiley
Digging to America Anne Tyler
The Housekeeper Melanie Wallace
Source: Guardian
