Hannah Kent, the Australian writer whose debut novel, Burial Rites, has been a significant critical and commercial success, has been included on the shortlist for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction (formerly the Orange Prize).
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The listing means she is in line to win equivalent awards both in Australia, where she has been shortlisted for the Stella Prize, and in Britain. But because her novel – set in Iceland in 1829 and about the last woman executed there – has no Australian content it is ineligible for Australia's pre-eminent fiction award, the Miles Franklin.
Kent is on a publicity tour to coincide with publication of Burial Rites in the US. She faces tough competition on the Baileys shortlist from Donna Tartt's much-anticipated third novel, The Goldfinch, and former Orange Prize winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose Americanah has already won the National Book Critics Circle Award in the US, for which Tartt was also nominated.
Kent is not the only debut author on the list. She is joined by two Irish writers, Audrey Magee for The Under-taking, and Eimear McBride for A Girl is a Half-formed Thing. Jhumpa Lahiri's The Low-land completes the list.
Chair of the judges Helen Fraser said each of the shortlisted novels was extraordinary and original in its own way.
"Each offers something different and exciting and illuminating. We feel you could give any one of these books to a friend with the absolute confidence that they would be gripped and absorbed and that maybe their view of the world would be changed once they had read it."
The winner will receive £30,000 ($A53,700) and will be announced on June 4.
The shortlist
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah
Hannah Kent, Burial Rites
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland
Audrey Magee, The Undertaking
Eimear McBride, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch
