The Orange Prize for Fiction 2007 - Tiscali Shopping

The Orange Prize for Fiction was established in 1996 to celebrate the very best fiction writing in English, by women, throughout the world. Now in its twelfth year, the Prize celebrates excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing and aims to introduce writers of quality to the widest possible audience.

Each year's shortlist of six novels is selected from around 130 entries. The prize money of £30,000 and a limited edition bronze figurine known as the 'Bessie' are both anonymously endowed.

Here you can browse the shortlist for this year's award, as well as buy all the prize-winning books since the competition's inauguration in 1996.

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Muriel Gray, Chair of Judges, said: "The judges and I were hugely impressed by the power, ambition and skill of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's novel. It's astonishing, not just in the skillful subject matter, but in the brilliance of its accessibility. This is a moving and important book by an incredibly exciting author."

The story of five characters caught up in the civil war in Nigeria, this is the sweeping new novel from the author of "Purple Hibiscus", shortlisted for the Orange Prize and winner of the Commonwealth Writers Award. "Vividly written and thrumming with life".
  £11.49

This year's shortlist honours both new and well-established writers and reflects the international reach of the prize with authors from Nigeria, China, India and America represented. Two of the authors have previously been shortlisted for the Orange Prize. They are Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2004) and Anne Tyler (1996).

"The 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction shortlist is incredibly exciting," commented Muriel Gray, Chair of judges. " It represents six beautifully crafted pieces of work that are as accessible as they are fascinating. That this outstanding writing should come from such diverse sources that includes five different nationalities, a world famous author, as well as a first-time novelist, is doubly thrilling."

Full of achingly hilarious moments and toe-curling misunderstandings, "Digging to America" is a novel with a deceptively small domestic canvas, and subtly large themes - it's about belonging and otherness, about insiders and outsiders, pride and prejudice, young love and unexpected old love, families and the impossibility of ever getting it right, about striving for connection and goodness against all the odds. And the end catches you by the throat, ambushes your emotions when you least expect it, as only Tyler can.
  £3.99

This story is set in Scotland, in the year 1863. In an attempt to escape her not-so-innocent past in Glasgow, Bessy Buckley - the wide-eyed Irish heroine of "The Observations" - takes a job as a maid in a big house outside Edinburgh working for the beautiful Arabella. And it seems that Arabella has a few secrets - including her near-obsessive affection for Nora, a former maid who died in mysterious circumstances.
  £5.99

Amid the leafy avenues and comfortable houses, the residents of Arlington park live out the dubious accomplishments of civilisation: material prosperity, personal freedom, and moral indifference. Set over the course of a single rainy day, this novel moves from one household to another, and through the passing hours conducts a deep examination of its characters' lives.
  £11.49

Who would believe that reading a novel written in deliberately bad English could be as uplifting an experience as this? Written in short chapters, each the definition of a word, this is a brilliantly clever book that pokes fun at England and China, explores the endless possibilities for misunderstanding between East and West and paints a portrait of a relationship that everyone will understand, no matter what their nationality.
  £9.99

At the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, lives an embittered old judge who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. The judge must revisit his past, his own journey and his role in this grasping world of conflicting desires.
  £12.99

Orange Prize for Fiction 2006 winner: "This is a book which combines extraordinary characterisation with skilful and seemingly effortless plotting. It ranges from exposing the intimacies of family life to broader themes of aesthetics, ethics and the vagaries of academe in a literary tour de force." Martha Kearney, Chair of Judges
  £12.99