Valerie Martin wins Orange prize

American author Valerie Martin beat favourites Donna Tartt and Zadie Smith to win the Orange Prize for Fiction tonight.

Martin won for her novel Property, the story of a plantation owner’s wife in the American Deep South of the 1820s.

Tartt had been the bookmakers’ favourite to take the prize for her long-awaited second novel, The Little Friend.

Smith was also strongly tipped for her second book, The Autograph Man.

But the judges, who included model-turned-writer Sophie Dahl, decided Martin was the worthy winner.

The decision was announced at an awards ceremony in Lincoln’s Inn Fields in London.

Martin’s previous works include Mary Reilly, a reworking of the Jekyll and Hyde story from the perspective of a housemaid, which was made into a 1996 film starring Julia Roberts.

The Orange Prize, now in its eighth year, is awarded to the best English language novel by a female writer.

The other contenders were Edinburgh-born Shena Mackay for Heligoland; Glaswegian Anne Donovan for Buddha Da; and Canadian Carol Shields for Unless.

Although they made the shortlist, the second offerings from Tartt and Smith were published to mixed reviews.

Smith was left disappointed last year too when The Autograph Man failed to make the Booker shortlist.