Both of the Jewish authors long-listed for the Baileys prize have been winners before, back when Orange was the main sponsor.
Linda Grant's A Dark Circle is set in 1950, two years into the NHS, revolving around a TB sanatorium in the Kent countryside, where the East End Lynsky twins are the only Jews. She won the 2000 Orange prize for When I Lived in Modern Times.
Naomi Alderman's The Power is the only speculative fiction on the list. The Power imagines a world where women around the world develop a supernatural electrical power, sparking a new era of female dominance over men.
Alderman - who won the Orange Prize for new writing in 2006 - is currently having her novel Disobedience being made into a movie. This sparked its own controversy when kosher shoppers in Golders Green complained about film crews disrupting their Shabbat preparations.
