Five debut novelists among 20 vying for prize for women writers
Historical fiction – from love among heroes in ancient Greece to bickering jazz musicians in Nazi-occupied Paris – forms a significant chunk of this year's Orange prize longlist, which has been revealed to coincide with International Women's Day. Twenty novels made the list for Britain's only annual prize for fiction written by women, including books by Emma Donoghue, Anne Enright, AL Kennedy and Ali Smith.
There were five books by debut novelists and four from writers with their "tricky" second novel. Joanna Trollope, the chair of judges, said the breadth of subject matter was particularly striking.
"It is the diversity that really characterises this longlist," she said. "Yes, there are a fair number of historical novels, but they vary hugely from a gay cabaret artist in Berlin in the second world war to a preacher going off to deal with lost souls on a Hebridean island in the 1830s."
A total of 143 novels were submitted for the prize, many dealing with historical subjects and many set during the second world war, said Trollope. "It is because, I think, it is just so unresolved. Writers inevitably go back to unfinished business and try and work it out somehow, so it is a very natural topic."
Many serious subjects had been tackled, she said, which was a good thing. "There's an extraordinarily unafraid quality in women when it comes to both emotions and writing. Fiction is a way into life's great dilemmas and it is more than justified that serious stuff gets aired in fiction – quite apart from the fact that comic fiction is unbelievably hard to write."
The list for this year's prize, the 17th, consists of eight British writers, seven American, three Irish, one Swedish and one Canadian author.
The oldest set novel is Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles, which tells of the love between Homeric heroes Achilles and Patroclus. Miller, a teacher of Latin and ancient Greek, took 10 years to complete her first published novel.
Other historical novels include Karin Altenberg's Island of Wings, set on St Kilda in the 1830s; Stella Tillyard's Tides of War, a story of love and betrayal set in Regency London during the Peninsular war; and Esi Edugyan's jazz in Nazi-occupied Paris novel, Half Blood Blues, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize last year.
There will be real pleasure in seeing Smith longlisted for There but for the, a novel many felt should have been listed for last year's Booker. It tells the story of a dinner party guest who locks himself in the spare room and stays – and stays.
Emma Donoghue, shortlisted for the Orange and Man Booker prizes two years ago for her international bestseller Room, is longlisted for her seventh novel, The Sealed Letter, based on a real Victorian courtroom scandal, the Codrington divorce. Anne Enright, who won the Booker in 2007 for The Gathering, is listed for The Forgotten Waltz, a Dublin-set story of adultery and its consequences; and AL Kennedy, who won the Costa book of the year in 2007 with Day, is listed for her sixth novel, The Blue Book, set on an Atlantic cruise ship with a dodgy spiritualist medium as one of its main characters.
The five debut novelists on the list are Altenberg, Tillyard and Miller, along with Erin Morgenstern for The Night Circus, and Amy Waldman for The Submission.
The 20 are completed by the City-set On The Floor, the third novel of the Irish writer Aifric Campbell, who spent 13 years working as an investment banker in London; Leah Hager Cohen's The Grief of Others; Roopa Farooki for The Flying Man; Jaimy Gordon for Lord of Misrule; Georgina Harding for Painter of Silence; Jane Harris for Gillespie and I; Francesca Kay for The Translation of the Bones; Cynthia Ozick for Foreign Bodies; Ann Patchett for State of Wonder; and Anna Stothard for The Pink Hotel.
The judging panel this year also includes Lisa Appignanesi, Victoria Derbyshire, Natalie Haynes and Natasha Kaplinsky. All read around 35 books each, while Trollope read them all.
"This experience has been an absolute treat," said Trollope. "It has actually been quite exhilarating because three of the judges are younger than my own children, which has brought a wonderful kind of freshness and energy not just to the meetings, but to me."
It is Trollope's first time on the Orange jury but not her first time chairing a book prize. "I do it because I believe so earnestly in literary prizes being the most wonderful showcase for writers and because writing, for some reason, is such an envied and sexy profession now – everyone seems to want to write a book, and it is getting harder and harder to get visibility of any kind.
"I'm very keen on assisting writers who are coming up who are finding it jolly hard to get noticed. It also keeps me in touch; it is quite energising for someone creative like me to realise just how good stuff there is out there and also how incredibly varied it is."
The prize has been won for the last three years by American writers – Téa Obreht, Barbara Kingsolver and Marilynne Robinson.
The shortlist will be announced in April before the £30,000 winner is announced at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 30 May.