Orange prize 2011 tipped to go to Room

Emma Donoghue’s novel is 2/1 favourite to take £30,000 award for women’s writing Room lost out on the Booker to Howard Jacobson’s The Finkler Question, but Emma Donoghue’s story of a boy and his mother locked in a tiny room for years is emerging as the frontrunner to take the Orange prize this evening. Donoghue’s novel, which took as its jumping off point the Josef Fritzl case, was picked yesterday by a “shadow” youth panel of teenage judges as their favourite on the six-strong shortlist, ahead of this evening’s main announcement. It is also 2/1 favourite at William Hill to win the overall Orange prize for fiction, and has sold 470% more copies on Amazon.co.uk than its nearest rival, Aminatta Forna’s The Memory of Love, since the shortlist was announced in April. “We all agreed Room stood out. For us, it was the most accessible and gripping, and a real page-turner,” said youth panel member Martha Samano, 16. “It’s an horrific tale told with powerful innocence – we all felt it changes the way you view the world and makes you question your environment.” Donoghue said she was “tickled pink” to be the Orange prize youth panel winner. “When I wrote Room I was imagining a reader anything from 11 up, so I’m really chuffed it’s finding so many young readers,” said the Irish author, who has already seen the book, her seventh novel, shortlisted for the Booker and win the Irish novel of the year award. William Hill made Forna’s tale of post-war Sierra Leone The Memory of Love its second favourite to take the £30,000 Orange prize for women’s writing, at 5/2. Emma Henderson’s Grace Williams Says It Loud and Nicole Krauss’s Great House were both given odds of 5/1, with Kathleen Winter’s debut novel Annabel and Téa Obreht’s The Tiger’s Wife at the back of the pack, at 6/1. At Amazon.co.uk, meanwhile, head of books buying Darren Hardy said that Room “has been one of the standout books of the past year”. It “has performed consistently well since being shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2010, spending more than five months in the bestseller list on Amazon.co.uk,” he said. “A win on Wednesday night could see it shoot to the top of the book chart and attract even greater success for the author.” Since the shortlist was announced in April, Room has taken 69% of the shortlist’s sales through Amazon.co.uk. The Memory of Love took 12%, The Tiger’s Wife 8%, Henderson’s novel 7%, Annabel 3% and Krauss’s Great House just 1%, said the online bookseller. Orange prize for fiction Fiction Awards and prizes Emma Donoghue Alison Flood guardian.co.uk

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