Kiran Desai frontrunner for Orange Prize

LONDON: India-born Booker Prize winning author Kiran Desai is the frontrunner to win this year's prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction.

Desai, who is among six finalists shortlisted for the 30,000 pounds prize, is nominated for her second novel The Inheritance of Loss which won the prestigious Booker last year.

The shortlist containing writers from five countries include American Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Tyler for Digging to America, Nigeria's Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie for Half of a Yellow Sun, China's Xiaolu Guo for A Concise Chinese-American Dictionary for Lovers, Britain's Rachel Cusk for Arlington Park and Harris for The Observations.

The winner will be announced here on June 6.

The award celebrates "excellence, originality and accessibility in women's writing" and can be given to any female author writing in the English language.

Two of the writers have been finalists before - Adichie for her debut novel Purple Hibiscus in 2004 and Tyler for Ladder of Years in 1996.

The full name of the prize, being awarded for the 12th year, is the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, after its sponsor, telecommunications company Orange.

Broadcaster Muriel Gray, chairwoman of the judges, called the shortlist "incredibly exciting".  "It represents six beautifully crafted pieces of work that are as accessible as they are fascinating. That this outstanding writing should come from such diverse sources that include five different nationalities, a world famous author, as well as first-time novelist, is doubly thrilling."

This year's judging panel includes historian Kathryn Hughes, journalist Maya Jaggi and authors Marian Keyes and Kate Saunders.

Previous winners of the Orange Prize include Zadie Smith for On Beauty (2006), Lionel Shriver for We Need to Talk About Kevin (2005) and Andrea Levy for Small Island (2004).