Zadie Smith wins Orange Prize for On Beauty

British author Zadie Smith clutches her 'Bessie' after winning the eleventh Orange Prize for Fiction for her novel 'On Beauty'. Picture / Reuters

There were many who were stunned that her audacious debut White Teeth did not win UK's Orange Prize for Fiction six years ago.

But at her third attempt, Zadie Smith, 30, last night won the £30,000 ($89,000) award with On Beauty, a triumphant victory in the most hotly contested year in the history of the prize for women novelists.

The bookies' favourite, whose acclaim has hitherto rarely translated into prize winner's cheques, beat a shortlist including Ali Smith, Hilary Mantel and Sarah Waters.

But Zadie Smith emerged victorious only after fierce debate lasting three-and-a-half hours among judges chaired by Martha Kearney, the broadcaster, and including Jenny Eclair, the comedian and writers Jacqueline Wilson and India Knight.

Ms Kearney said: "Obviously there was disagreement. It was controversial, but the reason we ended up with Zadie was because there was a real passion about her.

"It's a book that you see a lot more in each time you look at it. It combines extraordinary characterisation with skilful and seemingly effortless plotting. It ranges from exposing the intimacies of family life to broader themes of aesthetics, ethics and vagaries of academe in a literary tour de force."

In terms of doling out prizes, several of the contenders could fairly argue that they have been previously overlooked.

There certainly appeared to have been some resistance to Smith herself in some quarters, with hints of sexism against the sassy cerebral beauty.

But Ms Kearney said: "She's a real talent. Sometimes with other prizes, there may have been a reaction against her. But I think she does deserve to be recognised."

However, at least three books were hotly debated - and even a fourth deemed eliminated "kept cropping up" - though the broadcaster declined to name names.

Booksellers united in praise of the victor.

Simon Robertson, fiction buyer for UK bookseller Waterstone's, said they were thrilled to see Zadie Smith receiving long-deserved recognition.

On Beauty was "a wonderful book, proving beyond doubt that the promise of White Teeth was no fluke," he said.

Jonathan Ruppin, of Foyles, said it was "an immensely stylish and evocative novel which confirms Zadie Smith as one of our brightest literary stars.

"Her gift for character is remarkable and should convince anyone who has dismissed her as over-hyped in the past."

Zadie Smith was born in north-west London in 1975 to a Jamaican mother and an English father who divorced when she was a teenager.

While studying English at King's College, Cambridge, - where she met her future husband, the writer Nick Laird - she published a few short stories and won the attention of a publisher.

But thanks to the wise advice of another student with literary connections, she got an agent instead and signed a book deal for a rumoured £250,000.

When White Teeth was eventually finished and published to a buzz of excitement in 2000, it won the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize yet failed to make the Booker Prize shortlist and was pipped to the Orange by Linda Grant's When I Lived in Modern Times.

The Autograph Man, her second novel, received more mixed reviews though was again shortlisted for the Orange Prize before On Beauty came out last year, reaching the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize then taking the Orange in a ceremony in London last night.

On Beauty is the story of Howard Belsey, a white working-class academic in bitter rivalry with a conservative black academic rival on an American campus, and the interlocking relationships between their respective families.

In structure, Smith admitted it was closely inspired by EM Forster's Howards End.

She has herself taught in America, at Harvard.

The other books on the shortlist were: The History of Love, a Richard and Judy book club selection by the American author Nicole Krauss, Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel, The Accidental by Ali Smith, Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living by first-time novelist Carrie Tiffany, an Australian, and The Night Watch by Sarah Waters.

- INDEPENDENT