Have to remember to write in that “broadband” in the official title, but the UK’s award for best novel by a woman has announced its longlist, which includes Booker Prize & NBCC Award winner Kiran Desai, Costa Award winner Stef Penney, Jane Smiley, M.J. Hyland, Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie, Anne Tyler and Jane Harris. In total there are nine British authors on the list, four Americans, two Australians and two Canadians. The other three are from China, India and Nigeria.
“This year’s Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction longlist is an absolute delight given the diversity and quality of the work,” commented Muriel Gray, Chair of Judges. “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.”