Homes wins fiction prize, beats Mantel

[1]

A.M. Homes

American author A.M. Homes has won the prestigious Women’s Prize for Fiction for her latest novel May We Be Forgiven, beating the bookie favourite Hilary Mantel.

Mantel, who has already made literary history by winning the Booker Prize and the prestigious Costa Book of the Year Award for Bring Up The Bodies, second book in her trilogy on Thomas Cromwell, lost the chance to make a literary hat-trick with the prestigious prize, formerly known as Orange Prize for fiction. The prize, which was instituted in 1996, was till last year awarded under the sponsorship of Orange, which ended its 17-year-old sponsorship deal in 2012. The prize this year is being awarded without any sponsorship. The prize also announced a new three-year partnership with Baileys so that from next year it will be known as the “Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction.” Homes was given the prize at an awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, Southbank Centre in London on Wednesday evening.
She received £30,000 and a limited edition bronze figurine called the Bessie at the ceremony. New York-based Homes, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, is well known for her bestselling This Book Will Save Your Life, and her memoir, The Mistress’s Daughter.
“Our 2013 shortlist was exceptionally strong and our judges’ meeting was long and passionately argued, but in the end we agreed that May We Be Forgiven is a dazzling, original, viscerally funny black comedy – a subversion of the American dream.
This is a book we want to read again and give to our friends,” Miranda Richardson, chair of judges, said at the event.
The six-book shortlist included Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver, who won the prize in 2010 for her critically acclaimed novel The Lacuna. Another previous winner Zadie Smith was shortlisted for her latest novel NW.
The rest of the shortlist included Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life and Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
Last year, American writer Madeline Miller had beaten favourites like Ann Patchett and Cynthia Ozick to win the prize, exclusively for women writing in English, for her debut novel The Song of Achilles.
American authors have won the prize for last four years - Marilynne Robinson won for Home in 2009, Barbara Kingsolver won in 2010 for The Lacuna, Serbian-American writer Téa Obreht won for her debut novel The Tiger’s Wife in 2011 and Miller won the prize in 2102.
No Indian writer has won the prize as yet. There was no Indian woman in this year’s 20-strong longlist. In 2011, Chennai-based writer Tishani Doshi had made the longlist for her first novel, The Pleasure Seekers. Pakistani-origin British writer Roopa Farooki had also made the longlist in 2010 for her fifth novel, The Flying Man.