A newcomer is up against heavyweights including a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and a Man Booker Prize winner for the 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction.

Jane Harris is up for the £30,000 prize for her novel, The Observations, telling the story of a maid in 1860s Scotland, which is the only debut novel to make the shortlist that was announced today.

She faces tough competition from Anne Tyler, the 1989 Pulitzer Prize winner, who has been nominated for her novel Digging to America and Kiran Desai for The Inheritance of Loss, which won the 2006 Man Booker Prize.

The Orange award was set up in 1996 to promote fiction by women throughout the world, and this year's shortlist reflects the international reach with authors from Nigeria, China, India, Britain and America.

Other contenders include Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie with her novel, Half of a Yellow Sun, set in her native Nigeria in the 1960s during the brutal Nigeria-Biafra war, in which more than a million people died and thousands were massacred.

Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk, set in a modern English suburb over the course of a single rainy day, has also been shortlisted. It is her sixth book.

She is joined by Xiaolu Guo for her novel, A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers, a romantic comedy about two lovers who do not speak the same language.

Muriel Gray, the broadcaster and chairwoman of the judges, said: "The 2007 Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction shortlist is incredibly exciting. It represents six beautifully crafted pieces of work that are as accessible as they are fascinating. That this outstanding writing should come from such diverse sources that includes five different nationalities, a world famous author, as well as a first-time novelist, is doubly thrilling.”

She is joined on the panel by the historian and critic, Kathryn Hughes, the journalist and critic Maya Jaggi, the author Marian Keyes and the writer and journalist Kate Saunders. The winner will be announced at a ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall, in London, on June 6.

The shortlist

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Half of a Yellow Sun (Fourth Estate)

Rachel Cusk: Arlington Park (Faber & Faber)

Kiran Desai: The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton)

Xiaolu Guo: A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers (Chatto & Windus)

Jane Harris: The Observations (Faber & Faber)

Anne Tyler: Digging to America (Chatto & Windus)

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