Irrespective of whether you think there needs to be a separate prize just for books written by women, the 2013 list includes an impressive array of talent. It’s also a great example of the old reader’s saying “so many books, so little time.”
As would be expected, writers like Barbara Kinsolver, Michele Roberts, Hilary Mantel, Kate Atkinson, AM Holmes and Zadie Smith all make it. But there are also some intriguing less well-known writers, like Bonnie Nadzam, whose Lamb I am currently enjoying, and Maria Semple’s intriguing Where’d You Go Bernadette.
This award was, until last year, sponsored by Orange. When the company pulled out a number of organisations tried to step in but the current competition, with a top prize of GBP30,000, is privately, and anonymously, funded.
1.A Trick I Learned From Dead Men, Kitty Aldridge, Jonathan Cape
2.Alif the Unseen, G. Willow Wilson, Corvus Books
3.Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel, Fourth Estate
4.Flight Behavior, Barbara Kingsolver, Faber & Faber
5.Gone Girl, Gillian Flynn, Weidenfeld & Nicolson
6.Honour, Elif Shafak, Viking
7.How Should a Person Be?, Sheila Heti, Harvill Secker
8.Ignorance, Michele Roberts, Bloomsbury Publishing
9.Lamb, Bonnie Nadzam, Hutchinson
10.Life After Life, Kate Atkinson, Doubleday
11.Mateship With Birds, Carrie Tiffany, Picador
12.May We Be Forgiven, A.M. Homes, Granta Books
13.NW, Zadie Smith, Hamish Hamilton
14.The Forrests, Emily Perkins, Bloomsbury Circus
15.The Innocents, Francesca Segal, Chatto and Windus
16.The Light Between Oceans, M.L. Stedman, Doubleday
17.The Marlowe Papers, Ros Barber, Sceptre
18.The People of Forever Are Not Afraid, Shani Boianjiu, Hogarth
19.The Red Book, Deborah Copaken Kogan, Virago
20.Where’d You Go, Bernadette?, Maria Semple, Weidenfeld and Nicolson
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