Levy is shortlisted for romantic novel prize

SHE HAS already won the Orange Prize and the Whitbread and now another pounds 10,000 cheque is tantalisingly near for the writer Andrea Levy, who was shortlisted yesterday for the Romantic Novel of the Year award.

Levy, who has won widespread praise for her novel about Jamaican immigrants, Small Island, heads the list of contenders for the prize, which honours some of Britain's most commercially successful books.

The award, organised by the Romantic Novelists' Association and sponsored by FosterGrant Reading Glasses, is open to any book published in the UK in the past year "which embraces romance in its widest sense". It is not aimed at "traditional love stories".

Small Island tells the story of Hortense and Gilbert, who arrive in Britain from Jamaica as young newlyweds to face hostility and racism from a nation that had previously welcomed Gilbert's Second World War service as an airman.

The other novels on the shortlist are: A Good Voyage by Katharine Davies; Love and Devotion by Erica James; The Hornbeam Tree by Susan Lewis; The Tenko Club by Elizabeth Noble; and Cecilia Samartin's Ghost Heart.

Danuta Kean, a critic and the chair of the judges, said: "These books succeed in enriching the mind and heart through the authors' gifts of storytelling."

The winner will be announced at the Savoy hotel on 14 April.

THE SHORTLIST

VA Good Voyage by Katharine Davies (Chatto and Windus)

VLove and Devotion by Erica James (Orion)

VSmall Island by Andrea Levy (Headline)

VThe Hornbeam Tree by Susan Lewis (Heinemann/Random House)

VThe Tenko Club by Elizabeth Noble (Hodder)

VGhost Heart by Cecilia Samartin (Bantam Transworld)