American novelist Barbara Kingsolver has won the Orange Prize for The Lacuna.
The novel follows the dreamy Harrison William Shepherd as his destiny intertwines with celebrated Mexican residents Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and the exiled Communist Leon Trotsky. Chair of the Orange prize’s judges, Daisy Godwin, commented that it is “a book of breathtaking scale and shattering moments of poignancy”.
Melbourne-based journal Kill Your Darlings reflected on the “grimness” of the Orange Prize, pointing to comments that many “books by women had been called ‘small’, ‘domestic’ and unambitious'”.
Now in its fifteenth year, the award for the best novel by a woman featured a strong field including Hilary Mantel’s Booker-winning Wolf Hall.