Author celebrating her 84th birthday joins previous winner Ann Patchett and Booker winner Anne Enright on six-strong shortlist
Mark Brown, arts correspondent - guardian.co.uk,
Cynthia Ozick celebrated her 84th birthday on Tuesday and news that her seventh novel, Foreign Bodies, has been shortlisted for the 17th Orange prize for excellence in fiction written by women.
She admitted, however, that she would rather people did not dwell on the former. Asked if she minded her age being mentioned, Ozick said: "Yes, is the direct answer, yes. Because I think that writers are judged on their work and not on their age, and that seems to me a very simple axiom. I suppose if a writer publishes a novel at the age of 10 it is worth mentioning, but if one is mature it seems rather irrelevant."
However, Ozick added: "I understand journalism, I do, and journalists latch on to things that seem remarkable. To me, it does not seem remarkable, although when I look at the number it seems dreadfully old. But I don't relate to it."
She joins a list including her fellow Americans Ann Patchett and Madeline Miller, Esi Edugyan from Canada, the Irish writer Anne Enright and the sole British contender, Georgina Harding.
The six novels explore subjects as diverse as modern-day adultery, ancient Greek love and wartime atrocities in Romania. The £30,000 winner will be announced on 30 May at a the Royal Festival Hall in London.
The novelist Joanna Trollope, chair of this year's judges, said: "I think this is one of the strongest lists I've seen for a literary prize and I'm quite an old hand at them now. It is a list of international standing."
Trollope highlighted "the diversity of voice, the diversity of subject matter, the strength and accessibility". She added: "They are all so readable. I know Stella Rimington got shot down last year for using that word, but what is the point of a book if it isn't?
"Anyone who reads any of them will be left with so much to think about afterwards. They can be read by academics, they can be read by people in local book clubs. There is so much meat in them."
Ozick was installed as 2/1 favourite by the bookmaker William Hill. Her novel loosely uses Henry James's The Ambassadors as a platform from which to explore big themes such as anti-semitism and the postwar divergence in fortunes of Europe and America.
Patchett, who won the prize 10 years ago for Bel Canto, is shortlisted for State of Wonder, a gripping Amazonian adventure story about the search for a drug that could change women's lives.
Another literary heavyweight on the list is Enright, who won the Man Booker prize in 2007 for The Gathering. She is shortlisted for The Forgotten Waltz, which explores adultery and the power of children in a family.
Enright said: "I am so proud to be on the shortlist for the Orange. It is the friendliest and most forward-looking of all the prizes, constantly bringing new names to our attention and casting older ones in a new light. It gives the bag a shake."
Harding is nominated for her third novel, Painter of Silence, set in postwar Romania, telling the story of Iasi, an artistically gifted deaf and mute man who turns up nearly dead on the steps of a hospital.
Edugyan is shortlisted for Half Blood Blues, which was also on last year's Man Booker shortlist. It tells the story of black jazz musicians in Nazi-occupied Paris.
The sixth book on the list is Miller's debut novel, The Song of Achilles, set in Greece in the age of heroes, telling the story of the love between Achilles and Patroclus.
Other judges on the panel were the writer Lisa Appignanesi, the broadcasters Victoria Derbyshire and Natasha Kaplinsky, and the writer and broadcaster Natalie Haynes.
She admitted, however, that she would rather people did not dwell on the former. Asked if she minded her age being mentioned, Ozick said: "Yes, is the direct answer, yes. Because I think that writers are judged on their work and not on their age, and that seems to me a very simple axiom. I suppose if a writer publishes a novel at the age of 10 it is worth mentioning, but if one is mature it seems rather irrelevant."
However, Ozick added: "I understand journalism, I do, and journalists latch on to things that seem remarkable. To me, it does not seem remarkable, although when I look at the number it seems dreadfully old. But I don't relate to it."
She joins a list including her fellow Americans Ann Patchett and Madeline Miller, Esi Edugyan from Canada, the Irish writer Anne Enright and the sole British contender, Georgina Harding.
The six novels explore subjects as diverse as modern-day adultery, ancient Greek love and wartime atrocities in Romania. The £30,000 winner will be announced on 30 May at a the Royal Festival Hall in London.
The novelist Joanna Trollope, chair of this year's judges, said: "I think this is one of the strongest lists I've seen for a literary prize and I'm quite an old hand at them now. It is a list of international standing."
Trollope highlighted "the diversity of voice, the diversity of subject matter, the strength and accessibility". She added: "They are all so readable. I know Stella Rimington got shot down last year for using that word, but what is the point of a book if it isn't?
"Anyone who reads any of them will be left with so much to think about afterwards. They can be read by academics, they can be read by people in local book clubs. There is so much meat in them."
Ozick was installed as 2/1 favourite by the bookmaker William Hill. Her novel loosely uses Henry James's The Ambassadors as a platform from which to explore big themes such as anti-semitism and the postwar divergence in fortunes of Europe and America.
Patchett, who won the prize 10 years ago for Bel Canto, is shortlisted for State of Wonder, a gripping Amazonian adventure story about the search for a drug that could change women's lives.
Another literary heavyweight on the list is Enright, who won the Man Booker prize in 2007 for The Gathering. She is shortlisted for The Forgotten Waltz, which explores adultery and the power of children in a family.
Enright said: "I am so proud to be on the shortlist for the Orange. It is the friendliest and most forward-looking of all the prizes, constantly bringing new names to our attention and casting older ones in a new light. It gives the bag a shake."
Harding is nominated for her third novel, Painter of Silence, set in postwar Romania, telling the story of Iasi, an artistically gifted deaf and mute man who turns up nearly dead on the steps of a hospital.
Edugyan is shortlisted for Half Blood Blues, which was also on last year's Man Booker shortlist. It tells the story of black jazz musicians in Nazi-occupied Paris.
The sixth book on the list is Miller's debut novel, The Song of Achilles, set in Greece in the age of heroes, telling the story of the love between Achilles and Patroclus.
Other judges on the panel were the writer Lisa Appignanesi, the broadcasters Victoria Derbyshire and Natasha Kaplinsky, and the writer and broadcaster Natalie Haynes.
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