Téa Obreht's debut novel, The Tiger's Wife, was the surprise winner of this year's Orange Prize for Fiction. At 25, Obrecht is the youngest winner in the award's 16-year history. Her victory "meant defeat for better established writers Emma Donoghue--the bookies' favourite for the bestselling Room--and Nicole Krauss for Great House. Many had also fancied the chances of Aminatta Forna for her rich and engrossing The Memory of Love," the Guardian reported. the other shortlisted novels were Kathleen Winter's Annabel and Emma Henderson's Grace Williams Says It Loud.
The judges praised The Tiger's Wife as evidence of a "truly exciting" new literary talent. "It is a very brave book," said Bettany Hughes, chair of the judging panel. "We were looking for a book that had some kind of alchemy, that changed us as readers and changed the way we thought about the world and The Tiger's Wife certainly does that. It is a very special book." Hughes called the final decision, which was not unanimous, a difficult one, with a Tuesday-night judging panel session lasting more than four hours.
