Orange Prize Longlist 2012

Four Scottish books have been longlisted for the 2012 Orange Prize for Fiction, which is exclusively for women writers. The five judges have included Jane Harris' Gillespie and I, Ali Smith's There but for the and Karin Altenberg's Island of Wings, which is set on a remote Scottish Island, and A L Kennedy's The Blue Book.

The shortlist for the prize will be announced on 17th April, and the overall winner on 30th May.

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  The Blue Book
  A. L. Kennedy - Hardback - Jonathan Cape
  Elizabeth Barber is crossing the Atlantic by liner with her perfectly adequate boyfriend, Derek, who might be planning to propose. In fleeing the UK temporarily, Elizabeth may also be in flight from her past and the charismatic Arthur, once her partner. But as the voyage progresses, Elizabeth's past is slowly revealed.
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  Gillespie And I
  Jane Harris - Paperback - Faber
  In 1888, young, art-loving Harriet Baxter arrives in Glasgow at the time of the International Exhibition. Befriending the Gillespie family, Harriet soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes the promise and certainties of this world all too rapidly disorientate into mystery and deception.
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  Island Of Wings
  Karin Altenberg - Paperback - Quercus
  Exquisitely written and profoundly moving, 'Island of Wings' is more than just an account of a marriage in peril - it is also a richly imagined novel about two people struggling to keep their love, and their family, alive in a place of terrible hardship and tumultuous beauty.
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  There but for the
  Ali Smith - Hardback - Hamish Hamilton
  Imagine you have a dinner party and a friend of a friend brings a stranger to your house as his guest. He seems pleasant enough. Imagine that this stranger goes upstairs halfway through the dinner party and locks himself in one of your bedrooms and won't come out. Imagine you can't move him for days, weeks, months. If ever.