This year's Orange prize shortlist was announced at the London Book Fair this morning - you can read the full story here. The refulgence of the Smith-Smith-Waters-Mantel line-up made last year's all-star shortlist a hard act to follow, but with their canny decision to look beyond the UK's shores (just two of this year's authors - Rachel Cusk and Jane Harris - are British), the judges have, I think, pulled it off.
The inclusion of last year's Booker winner, Kiran Desai, guarantees them column inches, and the combination of Desai, Cusk, Anne Tyler and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie promises that the race to the finish line will be a close one.
As I said back at the longlist stage, I'll personally be putting my money on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's stark, delicate, magnificent account of the Nigeria-Biafra war, Half of a Yellow Sun. It was, in fact, reviewed in glowing terms in our own venerable organ by none other than Maya Jaggi, who's on the judging panel of this year's prize - so we know that one of the judges, at least, is unequivocally in favour. Furthermore, an Orange prize for the novel would go some way towards compensating for the travesty that was its non-appearance on the Booker longlist last year. If you haven't read it yet, I urge you to do so at your earliest convenience.
That's enough about me. Who do you think should win this year? Time for Tyler, perhaps, or should Desai make history and become the first person to carry off the Booker and the Orange prize for the same novel?
