News

« Headlines

Penney and Desai join Orange longlist

19.03.07

Novels by Booker winner Kiran Desai and Costa book of the year winner Stef Penney have been included on this year's Orange Broadband longlist. The list of 20 novels from 11 different publishers, sees Random House come out on top with five longlisted books, ahead of Faber with three. Independent presses are also represented by Tindal Street Press, Quercus, and Solidus.

The list pits eight first-time novelists against three novelists who have previously been longlisted, and a further three who have been shortlisted. The list also includes veteran writers Margaret Forster, who is longlisted for her 23rd novel, and Anne Tyler, who is listed for her 16th novel.

Muriel Gray, chair of judges, said: "This year's Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction longlist is an absolute delight given the diversity and quality of the work. Our decision has resulted in a spectrum arching from several new novels of outstanding merit, to exciting new books from important and established authors. Subject matter varies from the minutiae of personal experience, the exuberance of free thinking, the thrilling and entertaining epic, to the witty, the highly political, the challenging and enlightening."

The 2007 shortlist will be announced at The London Book Fair on 17th April and the winner will be announced at an awards ceremony to be held in The Ballroom at the Royal Festival Hall on 6th June.

The prize was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible and is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman in the English language.

The longlist in full
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)

stef penney kiran desai Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction

See Also