PVLD Adult Services Blog

American writer Barbara Kingsolver was announced last week as winner of the 15th Orange Prize for Fiction for The Lacuna.  The Orange Prize is awarded for the best novel in English by a female author.  Kingsolver beat out the favorite, Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall, for the award.

 The Lacuna, Kingsolver’s sixth novel, moves between Mexico and cold-war United States, and features such real-life personalities as muralist Diego Rivera, his wife painter Frida Kahlo, and Russian exile Leon Trotsky.  While the book received mixed reviews, the Orange Prize jury cited its “breathtaking scale and shattering moments of poignancy.”

Other books on the shortlist were:

Rosie Alison, The Very Thought of You

Attica Locke, Black Water Rising

Lorrie Moore, A Gate at the Stairs

Monique Roffey, The White Woman on the Green Bicycle

The prize jury also presents an Award for New Writers, to recognize first works of fiction.  This year’s winner was Irene Sabatini, for her novel The Boy Next Door, a love story/mystery set in post-colonial Zimbabwe.