Téa Obreht Wins the Orange Prize for The Tiger’s Wife

At 25, Serbian/American Téa Obreht has become the youngest author to ever win the prestigious Orange Prize for Fiction with her debut novel, The Tiger’s Wife.

Awarded annually to the best novel of the year written in English by a woman, since its debut in 1996, the Orange Prize has been won by such literary luminaries as Barbara Kingsolver (for The Lacuna), Zadie Smith (for On Beauty), Lionel Shriver (for We Need to Talk About Kevin), Andrea Levy (for Small Island) and Carol Shields (for Larry's Party).

The other shortlisted authors were:

Emma Donoghue (Irish) for Room (Picador)
Aminatta Forna (British/Sierra Leonean) for The Memory of Love (Bloomsbury) Emma Henderson (British) for Grace Williams Says it Loud (Sceptre)
Nicole Krauss (American) for Great House (Viking)
Kathleen Winter (Canadian) for Annabel (Jonathan Cape)

January Magazine contributing editor, David Abrams, was over the moon about The Tiger’s Wife is his review back in April. “The Tiger’s Wife is so majestic in its telling,” he wrote, “you almost don’t hear the the morality whispering past your ears. But the philosophical foundation of the book is strong and only serves to deepen Obreht’s strength as a storyteller.” That review is here.