London, 9.30am, 21 April 2009: The Orange Prize for Fiction, today announces the 2009 shortlist.

This year’s shortlist honours both new and well-established writers. Only one author, Deirdre Madden, has previously been shortlisted (1997).

“We have stretched our heads getting to this shortlist!” commented Fi Glover, Chair of judges. “We were right down to the wire on several of the books and choosing just six was far harder than I had imagined, but we all left the judging room proud of the list we have chosen.”

The Prize was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women throughout the world to the widest range of readers possible and is awarded for the best novel of the year
written by a woman.

The winner will be presented with a cheque for £30,000 and a limited edition bronze statue known as ‘the Bessie’, created by artist Grizel Niven. Both are anonymously endowed.

shortlist

Ellen Feldman
Scottsboro
Picador

Samantha Harvey
The Wilderness
Jonathan Cape

Samantha Hunt
The Invention of Everything Else
Harvill Secker

Deirdre Madden
Molly Fox's Birthday
Faber & Faber

Marilynne Robinson
Home
Virago

Kamila Shamsie
Burnt Shadows
Bloomsbury

find out more about the shortlisted novels