A jury of former judges is currently deciding which novel deserves to consume the laurels as the last decade’s finest novel by a woman. Who gets your vote?Every now and then prizes feel compelled to celebrate themselves. We’ve had the Best of Booker (Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children),the Booker of Bookers (also Salman Rushdie), the lost Booker (JG Farrell’s Troubles). Now it’s the turn of the Baileys Women’s prize for fiction to wheel 10 years of winners into the ring. In its previous livery, or as the Orange prize,Andrea Levy’s Small Island was crowned best of the first 10 years. Who will join Levy at Monday evening’s anointing of the best Baileys winner of its moment decade, as decided by an assembly of judges from each year? The public vote, and announced on Radio 4’s Women’s Hour on Monday morning,was for Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s half of a Yellow Sun, set in the Nigerian civil war. A quick tour round the books desk produced one vote vote for Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, or one for Marilynne Robinson’s domestic and one for Ali Smith’s How to Be Both. I’m rooting for Adichie for entirely personal reasons,which I explained in a recent blog.
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Source: theguardian.com