The Orange Prize for fiction was created in 1995 in response to a growing
awareness that often the considerable achievements of women novelists were
frequently being passed over by the major literary prizes. The Orange Prize
is judged exclusively by women, who choose the year's best novel in English
written by a woman.
2007
 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Review
"Brilliant. . . . Adichie entwines love and politics to a degree rarely achieved by novelists. . . . That is what great fiction does–it simultaneously devours and ennobles, and in its freely acknowledged invention comes to be truer than the facts upon which it is built." Elle (read more)
2006
 On Beauty by Zadie Smith
Review
"Ms. Smith possesses a captivating authorial voice...and in these pages, she
uses that voice to enormous effect, giving us that rare thing: a novel that is
as affecting as it is entertaining, as provocative as it is humane." Michiko
Kakutani, The New York Times (read more)
2005
 We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
Review
"[A] slow, magnetic descent into hell that is as fascinating as it is disturbing....[Shriver's]
prose fully renders the emotional chaos ripping Eva apart....And despite an unsympathetic
portrait of Kevin, when at the novel's end Eva declares she loves her son, you
not only believe her but you understand why." Vikas Turakhia, The Cleveland
Plain Dealer (read more)
2004
 Small Island by Andrea Levy
Review
"Levy has a superb ear for dialogue that captures the nuances and quirks of speech
and achieves the remarkable feat of both distilling and bringing into sharp relief
the weighty themes of race, war, colonialism, migration and love." The
New Zealand Herald (read more)
2003
 Property: A Novel by Valerie Martin
Review
"A nimble, enlightening and horrific story about the morally corrosive effects
of slavery and one childish soul, locked in a cycle of permanent bitterness." Kirkus
Reviews (read more)
2002
 Bel Canto: A Novel by Ann Patchett
Review
"Patchett creates a remarkably compelling chronicle of a multinational group
of the rich and powerful held hostage for months....Readers may intellectually
reject the author's willingness to embrace the terrorists' humanity, but only
the hardest heart will not succumb....Brilliant." Kirkus Reviews (read
more)
2001
 The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville
Review
"If the Australian bush is a stark and unforgiving land, utterly devoid of delicacy
or detail, then the emotional terrain of Grenville's characters lies in dramatic
contrast to their surroundings....Grenville rivals Proulx in perfectly marrying
people to place in a richly textured, warmly wry portrait of quixotic characters
longing for acceptance." Carol Haggas, Booklist (read
more)
1999
 A Crime in the Neighborhood by Suzanne Berne
Review
"Like Alice McDermott's That Night and in the tradition of Harper Lee's To
Kill A Mockingbird, Suzanne Berne has crafted a child's disillusionment that mirrors
a greater disaffection." Newsday (read more)
1998
 Larry's Party by Carol Shields
Synopsis
A novel which sets out to illustrate how men have changed, and how
masculinity is defined in a post-feminist world. It covers the life of
a man from 1977, when he was 27 years old, to 1997, and two strands run
through the book: work and goodness.
(read more)
1997
 Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels
Synopsis
The stories of two men from different generations whose lives have been
transformed by war. A young boy, Jakob Beer, is rescued from the mud of
a buried Polish city during World War II and taken to an island in
Greece by an unlikely saviour, the scientist/humanist Athos Roussos.
(read more)
1996
 A Spell of Winter by Helen Dunmore
Review
"Unsettling love and stifled horror create and then destroy the claustrophobic
world of this lush, literary gothic set in turn-of-the-century England....Dunmore's
keen, close writing is deserving of Britain's prestigious Orange Prize, which
the novel won when it was first published in the U.K. in 1995, and most will
enjoy the book as a finely crafted, if disturbing, literary page-turner." Publishers
Weekly (read more)
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