BARBARA KINGSOLVER'S THE LACUNA, WINS THE 2010 ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION.
Barbara Kingsolver was announced winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction at at glittering award ceremony in London on June 9th. She won the award for her first novel since 2000, The Lacuna, beating Hilary Mantel's Booker Prize winner, Wolf Hall. Daisy Goodwin, Chair of Judges, who announced the winning author at the ceremony, said: “We had very different tastes on the panel, but in the end we went for passion not compromise. We chose The Lacuna because it is a book of breathtaking scale and shattering moments of poignancy.”
The word lacuna means a gap or interval, but it also has botanical and anatomical meanings; before Kingsolver became a writer, she earned a master's degree in ecology and evolutionary biology. In "The Lacuna," Kingsolver embeds a fictional character, Harrison Shepherd, in Mexico in the 1930s, when the lives of Marxist theorist and assassination victim Leon Trotsky and the married painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo intersected, artistically, politically and sexually.
Kingsolver (born April 8, 1955) is an American novelist, essayist, and poet. She was raised in rural Kentucky and lived briefly in Africa in her early childhood. Kingsolver earned degrees in Biology at DePauw University and the University of Arizona and worked as a freelance writer before she began writing novels. Her most famous works include The Poisonwood Bible, the tale of a missionary family in the Congo, and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a non-fiction account of her family's attempts to eat locally. Her work often focuses on topics such as social justice, biodiversity, and the interaction between humans and their communities and environments. Kingsolver has received numerous awards, such as the National Humanities Medal, and has been nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Pulitzer Prize.
For a detailed account of the awards and Kingsolver's reaction go to Orange Awards offcial website or an article in The Gaurdian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/09/orange-prize-barbara-kingsolver.
