Yesterday, friend of Full Stop Téa Obreht (you can read my interview with Téa here) became the youngest ever recipient of the Orange Prize, which is annually awarded to a female author of excellence. Congratulations, Téa! The Tiger’s Wife, still the best book I’ve read this year, is very deserving of the prize and the £30,000 ($1.5 mil in real money) that comes with it. Bettany Hughes, the judging chair, said the decision to award Obreht the prize was “brave”, because it was not unanimous. “Though I guess it would have been braver to give it to a man,” she added.*
I’ve been pretty critical of the “look how young she is!” narrative — it’s condescending and irrelevant — but I’ll put that aside for the moment. She’s young! Her agent’s young! Her editor’s young! Youth movement!
*Not really.
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