Young writer Téa Obreht wins Orange
Obreht, who won the 30,000 award for her debut novel The Tiger's Wife, is 25. She was born in Serbia, but left the country with her family in 1992 after the outbreak of the Balkan wars, arriving in the United States five years later.
The novel is a spirited attempt to cram her cultural and family heritage into a metaphorical story, which addresses the big themes of war in a series of strange, dreamlike tales. In the central one, a tiger has escaped from the local zoo and prowls through a city's ruined streets to live above a Balkan village where it is cared for by a deaf-mute girl, who becomes known as "the tiger's wife".
Praising the book, chair of judges Bettany Hughes said: "The Tiger's Wife is an exceptional book and Ta Obreht is a truly exciting new talent."