Scottish author joins literary elite on shortlist for £30,000 Orange prize
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Your support makes all the difference.The Scottish writer Anne Donovan makes a surprise entry on the shortlist for the Orange Prize today with her first novel.
Buddha Da's entry in the final six of the £30,000 prize pits Donovan against some of the biggest names in modern literature and also sees the small, independent publisher Canongate challenge the world's biggest publishing houses.
Heading the shortlist are Zadie Smith, whose second novel The Autograph Man is published by Hamish Hamilton, and Donna Tartt, whose long-awaited second book The Little Friends is published by Bloomsbury. Edinburgh-born Shena Mackay is shortlisted for her novel Heligoland, the Canadian Carol Shields for Unless and the American writer Valerie Martin for Property.
Last night Donovan, an English teacher at a Glasgow high school, revealed that she had taken up writing only in 1995 after attending a writers' workshop. "I had studied English literature at university in Glasgow which meant I was too intimidated to write properly, to finish anything off or to show my writing to anyone," she said.
"I am still teaching part-time at Hillhead High School but had already decided to write full-time even before I knew I was on the Orange long-list."
Donovan won the Macallan short story competition in 1997 and three years later was awarded the Canongate Prize. Hieroglyphics and Other Stories, her first collection of short stories, was published in 2001.
The Orange judges described Buddha Da, a soft-centred domestic comedy written in the Glasgow vernacular, as a "stunning debut novel". They said that Donovan "completely captures these lives in her clear-eyed, evocative prose, rendered alternately in the voices of each of the main characters".
They added: "With seamless grace and astonishing veracity, Buddha Da treats serious themes with humour and its characters with humanity."
Donovan said she had been inspired to write in the vernacular by Glasgow's thriving literary community, which is providing a complementary voice to the Edinburgh writing led by Irvine Welsh.
Edinburgh-based Canongate had a second newcomer in the Orange long-list with Louise Welsh's The Cutting Room. The novel had been bought on the strength of 30,000 words and has gone on to sell more than 35,000 copies in hardback.
Judges for the prize, now in its eighth year, include Margaret Reynolds, Reader in English at Queen Mary College, and the model and recently published author Sophie Dahl. The winner will be announced at a ceremony in London on 3 June.
The final six
Anne Donovan: Buddha Da
Shena Mackay: Heligoland
Valerie Martin: Property
Carol Shields: Unless
Zadie Smith: The Autograph Man
Donna Tartt: The Little Friend
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