Press Release

Orange Prize for Fiction longlist announced18/03/2009

The Orange Prize for Fiction today announced the 2009 longlist.

Two Hachette UK titles feature on this year's longlist, V.V. Ganeshananthan's debut Love Marriage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson) and Home by Marilynne Robinson (Virago). 

The Prize was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout the world and is awarded for the best novel of the year written by a woman in the English language.  Any woman writing in English is eligible and the winner will receive a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze known as a ‘Bessie’.

"All the books on the longlist are there because each one, in its own way, is terrific in its ambition, quality and simple ability to entertain," commented Fi Glover, Chair of Judges. "We had a fabulous, if difficult, time narrowing the list down to 20 novels - and it's a wide open field."

The shortlist will be announced on 21st April and the winner will be announced at an awards ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall on 3rd June.

The Orange Prize for Fiction 2009 longlist

  • Debra Adelaide, The Household Guide to Dying (HarperCollins)
  • Gaynor Arnold, Girl in a Blue Dress (Tindal Street Press)
  • Lissa Evans, Their Finest Hour and a Half (Doubleday)
  • Bernadine Evaristo, Blonde Roots (Hamish Hamilton)
  • Ellen Feldman, Scottsboro (Picador)
  • Laura Fish, Strange Music (Jonathan Cape)
  • V.V. Ganeshananthan, Love Marriage (Weidenfeld & Nicolson)
  • Allegra Goodman, Intuition (Atlantic Books)
  • Samantha Harvey, The Wilderness (Jonathan Cape)
  • Samantha Hunt, The Invention of Everything Else (HarvillSecker)
  • Michelle de Kretser, The Lost Dog (Chatto & Windus)
  • Deirdre Madden, Molly Fox’s Birthday (Faber and Faber)
  • Toni Morrison, A Mercy (Chatto & Windus)
  • Gina Ochsner, The Russian Dreambook of Colour and Flight (Portobello Books)
  • Marilynne Robinson, Home (Virago)
  • Preeta Samarasan, Evening is the Whole Day (Fourth Estate)
  • Kamila Shamsie, Burnt Shadows (Bloomsbury)
  • Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife (Doubleday)
  • Miriam Toews, The Flying Troutmans (Faber and Faber)
  • Ann Weisgarber, The Personal History of Rachel DuPree (Macmillan New Writing)