Orange Prize longlist announced!

Still more cause to celebrate today, as Wolf Hall enters another prize longlist.

The Orange Prize for Fiction 2010 longlist

Rosie Alison - The Very Thought of You – Alma Books
Eleanor Catton – The Rehearsal – Granta
Clare Clark -  Savage Lands – Harvill Secker
Amanda Craig – Hearts and Minds - Little, Brown
Roopa Farooki – The Way Things Look to Me -Pan Books
Rebecca Gowers – The Twisted Heart - Canongate
M.J. Hyland - This is How - Canongate
Sadie Jones – Small Wars – Chatto & Windus
Barbara Kingsolver – The Lacuna – Faber and Faber
Laila Lalami - Secret Son - Viking
Andrea Levy – The Long Song – Headline Review
Attica Locke – Black Water Rising – Serpent’s Tail
Maria McCann – The Wilding – Faber and Faber
Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall - Fourth Estate
Nadifa Mohamed – Black Mamba Boy – HarperCollins
Lorrie Moore  – A Gate at the Stairs - Faber and Faber
Monique Roffey – The White Woman on the Green Bicycle – Simon and Schuster
Amy Sackville – The Still Point - Portobello Books
Kathryn Stockett-  The Help – Fig Tree
Sarah Waters – The Little Stranger - Virago

Now in its 15th year, the Orange Prize celebrates ‘excellence, originality and accessibility in women’s writing (BBC).’

Click here to read about the history of the prize, including how and why it was established.

This is the second time Hilary has been on the longlist, the first being for Beyond Black, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2006.

Another HarperCollins title, Black Mamba Boy, also made the longlist. Although I haven’t read this book myself, it comes highly recommended from people around the building who have, and who’ve loved it. It’s also got these brilliant quotes from Amazon Vine reviewers:

‘A great read, colourful and powerful’

‘One of the most wonderful things I have ever read!I was held spellbound by this book’

‘Rich description and a fascinating story’

The Orange Longlist nod might be the kick I needed to bump it up my must-read list.

Besides Wolf Hall, I also enjoyed MJ Hyland’s This is How – chilling in its realism and by value of its understatement. I felt an implacable sense of dread, of inevitability as I read it. Thankfully, this was shortlived; the book was so good I finished it in a day.

Read more about prize winners:

Dancing with the Queen of Sweden

We may not have won the Booker, but…

Prizes Galore at the National Books’ Critics’ Circle Awards!