Barbara Kingsolver Wins £30,000 Orange Prize

Barbara Kingsolver Wins £30,000 Orange Prize

Novelist Barbara Kingsolver (pictured) has won the Orange Prize for Fiction for The Lacuna, nudging out the favourite, Hillary Mantel. In 1999, her novel The Poisonwood Bible was shortlisted for the prestigious prize, which did not do her sales any harm at all. This year she is doubly lucky -- the Orange Prize carries a £30,000 award, and winners receive a bronze figurine nicknamed the "Bessie."

TV producer/author Daisy Goodwin, chair of judges, praised the book (about a man who mixes plaster for a famous muralist) for its "breathtaking scale."