A couple of lists which have been announced in the last 24 hours. First, the shortlist for this year’s Women’s Prize for Fiction:
- Life After Life by Kate Atkinson
- Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver
- May We Be Forgiven by A.M. Homes
- Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel
- Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple
- NW by Zadie Smith
This list reminds me that I want to read Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Life After Life. I also find it interesting that, after a couple of years where the Orange Prize (as was) has been won by debuts, this year we have a list strongly weighted towards more established names.
But this is also a time for new names, because Granta have announced their fourth Best of Young British Novelists list:
- Naomi Alderman
- Tahmima Anam
- Ned Beauman
- Jenni Fagan
- Adam Foulds
- Xiaolu Guo [my review of UFO in Her Eyes]
- Sarah Hall [my review of The Carhullan Army]
- Steven Hall [my review of The Raw Shark Texts]
- Joanna Kavenna
- Benjamin Markovits
- Nadifa Mohamed [my review of Black Mamba Boy]
- Helen Oyeyemi [my review of Mr Fox]
- Ross Raisin
- Sunjeev Sahota [my review of Ours are the Streets]
- Taiye Selasi
- Kamila Shamsie
- Zadie Smith [my review of NW]
- David Szalay
- Adam Thirlwell
- Evie Wyld [my review of After the Fire, a Still Small Voice]
Of course there are limitations to any exercise of this nature, and I don’t think there’s much mileage in treating the list as anything approaching ‘definitive’. Taken as a selection of names, though, I rather like this list. I’ve reviewed books by eight of the authors (linked above) and enjoyed them all. (I have read – but not reviewed – a ninth, whose book I didn’t care for; so be it.) I’m pleased to see women and non-white writers so strongly represented. And there are quite a few names on there whom I’ve been meaning to read. I think I might do a story-by-story review of the anthology, once I get hold of a copy. For now, congratulations to all!
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