Bloomberg — Kiran Desai and Anne Tyler were among six finalists tapped for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, the UK's annual literary award for women, whose winner will take home [POUNDSTERLING]30,000 ($59,700) and a bronze statuette known as "the Bessie."Designed to recognise novels that display "excellence, originality and accessibility," the prize has previously gone to authors such as Zadie Smith for "On Beauty" and Lionel Shriver for "We Need to Talk About Kevin."

This year's finalists have an even stronger international flavour, with authors representing five nationalities and plots reflecting the restless movement of people across borders.

Desai was named for "The Inheritance of Loss," which has already won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction. An ebullient look at how globalisation influences a Himalayan village, the novel toggles back and forth to Manhattan, past and present, describing a disparate group of characters as they grapple with identity, exile and revolution.

Tyler's "Digging to America" probes the complexities of identity and belonging as it traces the lives of two very different couples who meet at a US airport to collect their adopted Korean infants.

Other established authors including Jane Smiley and Margaret Forster didn't make the final cut, as the judges instead singled out less experienced authors from a broader international background.

Xiaolu Guo earned a slot on the short list for "A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers," a bittersweet romance between "Z," a 23-year-old Chinese student in London and an older English bachelor; as their relationship evolves, so does her vocabulary. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie was tapped for "Half of a Yellow Sun," which dramatises the bloody conflict over Biafra in the late 1960s.

The other finalists included Rachel Cusk for "Arlington Park," which follows the residents of a middle-class British suburb, and Jane Harris for "The Observations," an upstairs- downstairs tale set in 19th-century Scotland.

The winner will be announced at a ceremony at London's Royal Festival Hall in June.