India’s Tishani Doshi not in Orange Prize shortlist
Indian writer Tishani Doshi did not make it to the six-book shortlist for this year’s Orange Prize for Fiction. Chennai-based Doshi had been nominated for the 20-book longlist for her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers. The poet-dancer-writer has already published a collection of poetry, Countries of the Body.
The prize, exclusively for women writing in English, was set up in 1996 and last year American author Barbara Kingsolver won it for her critically-acclaimed novel, The Lacuna. British novelist Rose Tremain won the prize for her novel, The Road Home, in 2008 and Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie won for Half of a Yellow Sun in 2007. No Indian writer has won the prize as yet.
The winner of £30,000 prize will be announced at an awards ceremony in London on June 8.
The shortlist, which has three debut novelists, has been pared down to one British author, one American, one Irish, one Canadian, one British-Sierra Leonean and one Serbian-American author. Only Emma Donoghue is an experienced writer and Room is her seventh novel.
“Our judging meeting fizzed for many hours with conversations about the originality, excellence and readability of the books in front of us — credit to the calibre of submissions this year,” historian Bettany Hughes, who is chairing the jury, said.
“The verve and scope of storylines pays compliment to the female imagination. There are no subjects these authors don’t dare to tackle. Even though the stories in our final choices range from kidnapping to colonialism, from the persistence of love to Balkan folk-memory, from hermaphroditism to abuse in care, the books are written with such a skilful lightness of touch, humour, sympathy and passion, they all make for an exhilarating and uplifting read,” she added. The prize organisers are also giving away 250 free eBooks of The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver to celebrate the shortlist.
The shortlist comprises of Emma Donoghue: Room, Aminatta Forna: The Memory of Love, Emma Henderson: Grace Williams Says it Loud, Nicole Krauss: Great House, Téa Obreht: The Tiger’s Wife and Kathleen Winter: Annabel.
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