The 2011 Orange Prize for Fiction was awarded on 8 June in London to American/Serbian author Téa Obreht for her debut novel The Tiger’s Wife.  At age 25, Téa Obreht is the youngest author to take the prize.

Bettany Hughes, Chair of Judges, had this to say about the winning novel:

"The Tiger’s Wife is an exceptional book and Téa Obreht is a truly exciting new talent. Obreht’s powers of observation and her understanding of the world are remarkable. By skilfully spinning a series of magical tales she has managed to bring the tragedy of chronic Balkan conflict thumping into our front rooms with a bittersweet vivacity."

She continues, "The book reminds us how easily we can slip into barbarity, but also of the breadth and depth of human love. Obreht celebrates storytelling and she helps us to remember that it is the stories that we tell about ourselves, and about others, that can make us who we are and the world what it is."

Some extra information about Téa Obreht and her debut novel The Tiger’s Wife

Téa Obreht

Téa Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia and raised in Belgrade. In 1992 her family moved to Cyprus and then to Egypt, where she learned to speak and read English, eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997. After graduating from the University of Southern California, Téa received her MFA in Fiction from the Creative Writing Program at Cornell University in 2009. Téa was featured in The New Yorker’s Top 20 Writers under 40 Fiction Issue (June 2010) and at 24, was the youngest on the list. Her short story, The Laugh, debuted in The Atlantic fiction issue and was then chosen for The Best American Short Stories 2010, a further short story, The Sentry, featured in the Guardian Summer Fiction Issue. Her journalism has appeared in Harper’s magazine and she lives in Ithaca, New York.

The Tiger’s Wife

A tiger escapes from the local zoo, padding through the ruined streets and onwards, to a ridge above the Balkan village of Galina. His nocturnal visits hold the villagers in a terrified thrall. But for one boy, the tiger is a thing of magic – Shere Khan awoken from the pages of The Jungle Book.

Years later, in a Balkan country ravaged by conflict, Natalia, a young doctor, is visiting an orphanage when she receives word of her beloved grandfather’s death far from their home in mysterious circumstances. Remembering fragments of the stories her grandfather told her as a child, Natalia becomes convinced that he spent his last days searching for ‘the deathless man’ a vagabond who was said to be immortal. As Natalia struggles to understand why her grandfather, a deeply rational man, would go on such a far-fetched journey, she stumbles across a clue that leads her to the extraordinary story of the tiger’s wife.

http://www.orangeprize.co.uk/prize.html

Before I Go To Sleep by S. J. Watson

Every day Christine wakes up not knowing where she is. Her memories disappear every time she falls asleep. Her husband, Ben, is a stranger to her, and he’s obligated to explain their life together on a daily basis–all the result of a mysterious accident that made Christine an amnesiac. With the encouragement of her doctor, Christine starts a journal to help jog her memory every day. One morning, she opens it and sees that she’s written three unexpected and terrifying words: "Don’t trust Ben." Suddenly everything her husband has told her falls under suspicion. What kind of accident caused her condition? Who can she trust? Why is Ben lying to her? And, for the reader: Can Christine’s story be trusted? At the heart of S. J. Watson‘s Before I Go To Sleep is the petrifying question: How can anyone function when they can’t even trust themselves? Suspenseful from start to finish, the strength of Watson’s writing allows Before I Go to Sleep to transcend the basic premise and present profound questions about memory and identity. One of the best debut literary thrillers in recent years, Before I Go to Sleep deserves to be one of the major blockbusters of the summer. –Miriam Landis

• Hardcover | Kindle book
• Recommended for fans of Love You More by Lisa Gardner and The Dead Lie Down by Sophie Hannah

Sister by Rosamund Lupton

When the body of Beatrice’s beloved younger sister, Tess, is discovered in an abandoned building in Hyde Park and ruled a suicide, Beatrice knows the police have made a mistake. She’s certain her sister was murdered. Determined to uncover the truth, Beatrice impulsively begins to hunt for clues on her own. So begins Rosamund Lupton‘s stunning debut, Sister, at once an engrossing thriller and a powerful meditation on the bonds of family. Writing her story as a letter to Tess, Beatrice gradually connects the strange, varied occurrences leading up to Tess’s death–Tess’s pregnancy; a trial drug from a pharmaceutical company; a man who may or may not have been a figment of Tess’s imagination. Beatrice’s former life falls apart as her search veers toward obsession, and she realizes she might pay a terrible price for the truth. An adrenaline-filled psychological thriller, Sister’s emotional impact comes from Lupton’s heartrending portrait of the love between Beatrice and Tess. –Lynette Mong

• Hardcover | Kindle book
• Recommended for fans of I’d Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman and Room by Emma Donoghue

Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson

Mostly set in the Lower East Side of 1980s New York City, Ten Thousand Saints is that rare book that paints scenes so vividly you can imagine the movie in your head. I wanted to live inside its pages, where I could imagine not just the scenes themselves, but the cameras, the lights, the actors reading their lines off to the sides of the set. Main character Jude Keffy-Horn–named after a Beatles song by his adoptive hippy parents–spends his high school days in small town Vermont getting high with his best friend Teddy, waiting to turn 16, when he can legally drop out. When Teddy dies of an overdose on the last day of 1987, Jude is sent to live with his pot-dealer father in New York City. Jude soon falls in with a group of straight edge Hari Krishnas, where his commitment to abstinence in all forms–drugs, sex, meat–becomes an addiction itself. Jude struggles to create an identity amongst the extreme movements taking root downtown, while his parents struggle to understand their son’s rejection of their free love culture. Author Eleanor Henderson’s meticulous research into the straight edge movement in the late 1980s has opened a door to a piece of history handled with love, care, and incredibly unforgettable characters. –Alexandra Foster

• Hardcover | Kindle Book
• Recommended for fans of Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem and Netherland by Joseph O’Neill.

Robopocalypse by Daniel H. Wilson

In the not-too-distant future, robots have made our lives a lot easier: they help clean our kitchens, drive our cars, and fight our wars–until they are turned into efficient murderers by a sentient artificial intelligence buried miles below the surface of Alaska. Robopocalypse is a fast-paced sci-fi thriller that makes a strong case that mindless fun can also be wildly inventive. The war is told as an oral history, assembled from interviews, security camera footage, and first- and secondhand testimonies, similar to Max Brook’s zombie epic World War Z. The book isn’t shy about admitting to its influences, but author Daniel H. Wilson certainly owes more to Terminator than he does to Asimov. (A film adaptation is already in pre-production, with Steven Spielberg in the director’s chair and a release date slated for 2013.) Robopocalypse may not be the most unique tale about the war between man and machine, but it’s certainly one of the most fun. –Kevin Nguyen

• Hardcover | Kindle Book
• Recommended for fans of World War Z by Max Brooks and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith.

Dreams of Joy by Lisa See

Lisa See‘s Dreams of Joy picks up the story of sisters Pearl and May where Shanghai Girls left off: on the night in 1957 when Pearl’s daughter, Joy, discovers that May is her true mother. While Shanghai Girls followed the sisters from their time as models in the glittering "Paris of Asia" to their escape from the Japanese invasion and their new life in Los Angeles, its sequel sends Pearl back to Shanghai twenty years later in pursuit of Joy, whose flight to China is propelled by anger, idealism, and a desire to find her true father, Z.G., an artist who may be falling out of favor with the Party. Joy goes with him deep into the countryside to the Green Dragon commune, where they take part in the energetic inception of Mao’s Great Leap Forward. But hunger overshadows their collective dream of a communist paradise as the government’s bizarre agricultural mandates create a massive famine. Pearl, trapped in Shanghai as restrictions tighten, has little idea of the hardship Joy endures–until both women realize they must subvert a corrupt system in order to survive. The best estimates put the death toll from China’s Great Leap Forward at 45 million, and See is unflinching in her portrayal of this horrific episode. In clean prose, she gives us a resounding story of human resilience, independent spirits, and the power of love between mothers and daughters. –Mari Malcolm

• Hardcover | Kindle book
• Recommended for fans of Amy Tan and Mao’s Great Famine

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

In State of Wonder, pharmaceutical researcher Dr. Marina Singh sets off into the Amazon jungle to find the remains and effects of a colleague who recently died under somewhat mysterious circumstances. But first she must locate Dr. Anneck Swenson, a renowned gynecologist who has spent years looking at the reproductive habits of a local tribe where women can conceive well into their middle ages and beyond. Eccentric and notoriously tough, Swenson is paid to find the key to this longstanding childbearing ability by the same company for which Dr. Singh works. Yet that isn’t their only connection: both have an overlapping professional past that Dr. Singh has long tried to forget. In finding her former mentor, Dr. Singh must face her own disappointments and regrets, along with the jungle’s unforgiving humidity and insects, making State of Wonder a multi-layered atmospheric novel that is hard to put down. Indeed, Patchett solidifies her well-deserved place as one of today’s master storytellers. Emotional, vivid, and a work of literature that will surely resonate with readers in the weeks and months to come, State of Wonder truly is a thing of beauty and mystery, much like the Amazon jungle itself. –Jessica Schein

• Hardcover | Kindle book
• Read a Q& A between Ann Patchett and Elizabeth Gilbert
• Recommended for fans of Ann Patchett, The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver, and Doc by Mary Doria Russell

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough

At first glance, The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris might seem to be foreign territory for David McCullough, whose other books have mostly remained in the Western Hemisphere. But The Greater Journey is still a quintessentially American history. Between 1830 and 1900, hundreds of Americans–many of them future household names like Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mark Twain, Samuel Morse, and Harriet Beecher Stowe–migrated to Paris. McCullough shows first how the City of Light affected each of them in turn, and how they helped shape American art, medicine, writing, science, and politics in profound ways when they came back to the United States. McCullough’s histories have always managed to combine meticulous research with sheer enthusiasm for his subjects, and it’s hard not to come away with a sense that you’ve learned something new and important about whatever he’s tackled. The Greater Journey, like each of McCullough’s previous histories, a dazzling and kaleidoscopic foray into American history by one of its greatest living chroniclers. –Darryl Campbell

• Hardcover | Kindle eBook
• Recommended for fans of The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson and The Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw

Hardcover Fiction

19 June 2011

1. DREAMS OF JOY, by Lisa See
2. DEAD RECKONING, by Charlaine Harris
3. 10TH ANNIVERSARY, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
4. BURIED PREY, by John Sandford
5. THE JEFFERSON KEY, by Steve Berry
6. THE SIXTH MAN, by David Baldacci
7. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson
8. THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES, by Jean M. Auel
9. KISS OF SNOW, by Nalini Singh
10. TRADER OF SECRETS, by Steve Martini
11. CONVICTION, by Aaron Allston
12. CALEB’S CROSSING, by Geraldine Brooks
13. THE SNOWMAN, by Jo Nesbo
14. THE FINAL STORM, by Jeff Shaara
15. SIXKILL, by Robert B. Parker

Hardcover Fiction

12 June 2011

1. DEAD RECKONING, by Charlaine Harris
2. 10TH ANNIVERSARY, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
3. CONVICTION, by Aaron Allston
4. BURIED PREY, by John Sandford
5. THE JEFFERSON KEY, by Steve Berry
6. THE SIXTH MAN, by David Baldacci
7. THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES, by Jean M. Auel
8. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson
9. THE SNOWMAN, by Jo Nesbo
10. THE FINAL STORM, by Jeff Shaara
11. SIXKILL, by Robert B. Parker
12. CALEB’S CROSSING, by Geraldine Brooks
13. THE FIFTH WITNESS, by Michael Connelly
14. 2030, by Albert Brooks
15. THE PARIS WIFE, by Paula McLain

Hardcover Fiction

5 June 2011

1. DEAD RECKONING, by Charlaine Harris
2. 10TH ANNIVERSARY, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro
3. BURIED PREY, by John Sandford
4. THE JEFFERSON KEY, by Steve Berry
5. THE SIXTH MAN, by David Baldacci
6. THE FINAL STORM, by Jeff Shaara
7. THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES, by Jean M. Auel
8. CALEB’S CROSSING, by Geraldine Brooks
9. SIXKILL, by Robert B. Parker
10. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson
11. THE SNOWMAN, by Jo Nesbo
12. THE FIFTH WITNESS, by Michael Connelly
13. THE PARIS WIFE, by Paula McLain
14. 2030, by Albert Brooks
15. I’LL WALK ALONE, by Mary Higgins Clark

Hardcover Fiction

29 May 2011

1. DEAD RECKONING, by Charlaine Harris.
2. BURIED PREY, by John Sandford.
3. 10TH ANNIVERSARY, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro.
4. THE SIXTH MAN, by David Baldacci.
5. THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES, by Jean M. Auel.
6. SIXKILL, by Robert B. Parker.
7. CALEB’S CROSSING, by Geraldine Brooks.
8. THE FIFTH WITNESS, by Michael Connelly.
9. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson.
10. THE SNOWMAN, by Jo Nesbo.
11. THOSE IN PERIL, by Wilbur Smith.
12. BEL-AIR DEAD, by Stuart Woods.
13. I’LL WALK ALONE, by Mary Higgins Clark.
14. THE PARIS WIFE, by Paula McLain.
15. CHASING FIRE, by Nora Roberts.

The New York Times Best Sellers List

Hardcover Fiction

22 May 2011

1. DEAD RECKONING, by Charlaine Harris.
2. 10TH ANNIVERSARY, by James Patterson and Maxine Paetro.
3. THE SIXTH MAN, by David Baldacci. 
4. SIXKILL, by Robert B. Parker.
5. THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES, by Jean M. Auel.
6. I’LL WALK ALONE, by Mary Higgins Clark.
7. THE FIFTH WITNESS, by Michael Connelly. 
8. CHASING FIRE, by Nora Roberts. 
9. CALEB’S CROSSING, by Geraldine Brooks.
10. A TURN IN THE ROAD, by Debbie Macomber.
11. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson.
12. BEL-AIR DEAD, by Stuart Woods.
13. 44 CHARLES STREET, by Danielle Steel. 
14. IF YOU WERE HERE, by Jen Lancaster.
15. SAVE ME, by Lisa Scottoline.

The New York Times Best Sellers List

Hardcover Fiction

15 May 2011

1. THE SIXTH MAN, by David Baldacci.
2. THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES, by Jean M. Auel.
3. BEL AIR DEAD, by Stuart Woods.
4. A TURN IN THE ROAD, by Debbie Macomber.
5. THE FIFTH WITNESS, by Michael Connelly.
6. BORN OF SHADOWS, by Sherrilyn Kenyon.
7. I’LL WALK ALONE, by Mary Higgins Clark.
8. CHASING FIRE, by Nora Roberts.
9. THE GIRL WHO KICKED THE HORNET’S NEST, by Stieg Larsson.
10. SAVE ME, by Lisa Scottoline.
11. 44 CHARLES STREET, by Danielle Steel.
12. THE PARIS WIFE, by Paula McLain.
13. EVE, by Iris Johansen.
14. SING YOU HOME, by Jodi Picoult.
15. THE LOST FLEET. BEYOND THE FRONTIER: DREADNAUGHT, by Jack Campbell.

The winner of the 2011 Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction is:

The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg by Deborah Eisenberg

The honoured book, The Collected Stories of Deborah Eisenberg, brings together four volumes of Eisenberg’s work: Transactions in a Foreign Currency, Under the 82nd Airborne, All Around Atlantis, and Twilight of the Superheroes, which was a PEN/Faulkner Finalist in 2007. Eisenberg’s stories have long been admired for their exceptional language and nuanced evocation of thought and emotion. About this collection, judge Laura Furman says, “From the first to the last of her collected stories, Deborah Eisenberg demonstrates her sharp intelligence, literary inventiveness, and her clear understanding of human interconnectedness as it exists in isolation. Eisenberg’s reader often has the feeling that her characters don’t quite understand either who they are or how they got themselves into their present fix.  The struggle of her characters to create a whole life from the shards of their experience and emotions forms the moral core of Deborah Eisenberg’s work.” The recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, a Whiting Writer’s Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship, Deborah Eisenberg has also taught at the University of Virginia since 1994.

The PEN/Faulkner Award is America’s largest peer juried prize for fiction in the United States.  As winner, Eisenberg receives $15,000.  Each of the four finalists—Jennifer Egan for A Visit From The Goon Squad (Knopf); Jaimy Gordon for Lord of Misrule(McPherson & Co.); Eric Puchner for Model Home (Scribner); and  Brad Watson for Aliens in The Prime of Their Lives  (W.W. Norton)—receives $5,000.

http://www.penfaulkner.org/news/news/Deborah_Eisenberg_wins_2011_PENFaulkner_Award_for_Fiction

Sideways on a Scooter: Life and Love in India By Miranda Kennedy

NPR reporter Miranda Kennedy moves from New York City to India and finds the country is not quite as she imagined.

 When Miranda Kennedy decided to trade in her chaotic life as a reporter in New York City for the frenetic excitement of a rapidly developing country, she moved to India expecting a world of promise and enlightenment. But during the five years she spent in the buzzing city of New Delhi, Kennedy discovered that the progressive country she imagined is behind the times in many ways. While becoming close with six different Indian women, she learns that, though the country’s economy is growing at an exponential rate, many of its social and cultural norms have not changed in centuries. Kennedy chronicles her love affairs, hopes, disappointments, and friendships with wit and deft insight. Sideways on a Scooter is as much a sharp social commentary as it is a compelling, humorous travel memoir.

Bad Dog (A Love Story) By Martin Kihn

In this bittersweet memoir, Martin Kihn struggles to tame his alcohol addiction and his terribly behaved but nonetheless adorable dog.

  Many researchers have debated that owning a dog can improve one’s health, and Martin Kihn could certainly make a case for their argument. Marty was in a drunken haze when his wife Gloria announced she was adopting a Bernese Mountain Dog. But as the irresistible puppy started growing up and getting unruly, Marty’s alcoholism spiraled out of control, and his wife moved out. In a desperate attempt to save their marriage and pull his life together, Marty enrolled in Alcoholics Anonymous and the American Kennel Club’s rigorous dog-training program. Tirelessly teaching Hola to sit and stay helped Marty sober up, and together they passed the program’s Canine Good Citizen test. Walter Kirn, author of Up in the Air, hailed Bad Dog as "the most touching, original buddy story I’ve come across in ages."

Sisters of Fortune By Jehanne Wake

Wake’s biography of the Caton sisters—America’s first heiresses—is an extraordinary tale of four wealthy, clever women who were ahead of their time.

 Born into a wealthy Maryland family at the turn of the 19th century and brought up by their tobacco tycoon grandfather, the four Caton sisters were destined for a life of wealth and prominence. Jehanne Wake follows the three elder American heiresses—Bess, Louisa, and Emily—as they leave their youngest sister Marianne behind for the time-honored tradition of refilling the fortunes and bloodlines of the British aristocracy. Based on an unpublished collection of letters, Wake’s Sisters of Fortune is a groundbreaking, feminist biography that demonstrates how the Caton sisters capitalized on their fortune, spinning it into political and social influence on both sides of the Atlantic. The Sunday Times said, "The story of the Caton sisters sounds like the plot of an Edwardian novel by Henry James or Edith Wharton… remarkable… fascinating… a rare pleasure."

The Russian Affair By Michael Wallner

A thrilling plunge into a dangerous dance of love and espionage at the height of the Cold War.

 Michael Wallner, author of the international sensation April in Paris, ventures to a new country in this tale of a dangerous romance in Soviet Russia in The Russian Affair. Anna Viktorovna meets Soviet official Alexey Bulyagkov while her husband is on active duty with the army, and she begins an affair with him. When the KGB forces Anna to spy on Alexey, who is suspected of disloyalty to the state, she reluctantly agrees. But Anna is not the only one engaged in double-crossing. Wallner brings the 1970s Soviet Union to life in this suspenseful tale of love and espionage during the Cold War.

Bottom of the 33rd by Dan Barry

The story of the longest game in baseball history.

 Journalist Dan Barry takes us inside the longest baseball game in history. It started at dusk on April 18, 1981, Holy Saturday, and continued through eight hours and 33 innings. This legendary minor-league game, played between the Pawtucket Red Sox and the Rochester Red Wings, and the lives and dreams of the participants involved is brought lyrically to life. From the team owner hoping to fix a decrepit stadium to the father and son in the stands who refused to leave their seats in the bleachers for all eight hours, to the first baseman’s wife who travelled with him season after season, hoping he would make it to the majors—Barry weaves a vivid portrait of an unending game and the people whose hopes, dreams, and dedication kept the game going through the night.