LONDON: It is third time lucky for novelist Zadie Smith in more ways than one. Her third novel On Beauty has managed to secure the prestigious Orange literary award on her third attempt – her first two novels White Teeth and The Autograph Man had both been shortlisted for the Orange in earlier years but failed to secure the prize.
On Beauty, released last September and already doing well in sales figures, had also been shortlisted for two other literary awards – namely the Man Booker Prize and the Whitbred Fiction – but she was piped to the post by John Banville’s The Sea and Ali Smith’s The Accidental respectively.
The controversial novelist gave a teary acceptance speech on Tuesday night as she received the £30,000 award for the Orange prize for Fiction. “I am stunned, and am just really touched because I didn’t expect to win,” said the beautiful Smith. She said a fourth novel was a long way off, and instead she and her poet husband Nick Laird were moving to Rome for an eight-month stay.
Smith, the daughter of a Jamaican mother and English father, shot to fame in 1997 when Penguin paid her a whopping £250,000 for a draft of her first novel White Teeth. The novel became a best seller but only managed to win The Guardian First Book prize. Though shortlisted many times for major literary awards, this is the first award that Smith has won.
It was not plain sailing for Smith to win this award either. After much debate the all-women panel of judges had reached an impasse as to which book should win. In the end the Martha Kearney, chairperson of the judges for forced to take a majority vote. One judge remained passionately opposed to Smith’s book, but the panel did not reveal the identity of that judge. “Not everybody was happy, but as a chair you try to find a compromise book that you can get past everybody,” said Kearney. “But there was no moment when one judge threw a glass of wine over another,” she added.
The Orange Prize for Fiction was first instituted in 1996 to support women writers from around the world.
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