No belly laughs in Orange Prize list

‘‘There’s very little of what I’d call a hilarious romp and a lot of the books are very analytical, very reflective and possibly a little depressed about the state of the world — and I think that’s rather reflective of where we are,’’ Toksvig said. ‘‘I would have liked one book that had no social redeeming features whatsoever and was just hilarious. It just doesn’t seem to be the kind of moment for it.’’

Canadian writer Margaret Atwood made the six-name shortlist for her science fiction saga Oryx and Crake, which has been compared to George Orwell’s 1984. The veteran writer’s 11th novel sits alongside newcomer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s debut work Purple Hibiscus in the shortlist. Ngozi Adichie’s book explores the experiences of middle-class Nigerians in the midst of a military coup.

Andrea Levy’s Small Island, about the experience of migration, Gillian Slovo’s Ice Road, set in Leningrad in the 1930s, Rose Tremain’s The Colour, about the New Zealand gold rush of the mid-19th century, and Shirley Hazzard’s The Great Fire, set in the post-WW II Far East, make up the rest of the shortlist.

Toksvig said the panel of five judges, which also includes author Minette Walters and Labour peer Baroness Helena Kennedy, would now re-read the six shortlisted novels and vote for their favourites.

Toksvig said it was vital to set aside the authors’ backgrounds and circumstances in choosing a winner. ‘‘You can’t be thinking, ‘Oh, such and such a person has been hugely popular in the press, so we must have them on the list’, or ‘such and such a person is not well and needs the money.’ You can’t think of any of those things. The piece of writing has to stand on its own and that was the criteria that we had right from the beginning,’’ she said.

The awards ceremony is on June 8. The £30,000 prize was set up in 1996 to celebrate and promote fiction by women who write in English. — (Reuters)