Orange You Glad?

Congratulations to Barbara Kingsolver, who won this year's Orange Prize for fiction for her novel The Lacuna. The award goes to the best work of fiction written in English in a given year and, along with the increased sales these awards tend to generate, the winning author receives a cheque for £30,000.

The other nominees were:

Wolf Hall by English writer Hilary Mantel

The Very Thought of You by English writer Rosie Alison

Black Water Rising by American writer Attica Locke

A Gate at the Stairs by American writer Lorrie Moore

The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by English/Trinidadian writer Monique Roffey

Canadian author Anne Michaels won the Youth Panel Award - a special award this year that gave youth the opportunity to pick their favourite winner from the past 14 years - for her 1997 Orange Prize winner, Fugitive Pieces. The Orange Prize for New Writers went to Zimbawean author Irene Sabatini for The Boy Next Door.

Really, it's kind of an embarrassment of riches awards-wise.

I haven't read The Lacuna yet, but I loved Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and will have to put it on my Christmas list (goodness knows I have more than enough books to read until then).