Third time lucky for Ali?

It was installed as hot favourite to win the Booker Prize - but it was pipped at the post. Even worse, it wasn't even shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize.

Now, though, the controversial novel Brick Lane by first-time author Monica Ali - already hailed as "the new Zadie Smith" - has another chance to win one of the most fiercely contested, prestigious literary accolades in Britain: The Orange Prize for Fiction.

Today it is revealed that Ali's novel is on the longlist for this year's Orange Prize - which is strictly for women only.

So this time Mark Haddon (who won the Whitbread) and DBC Pierre (who scooped the Booker) won't beat her. However the 19 other authors in the running for the £30,000 prize - which is open to any woman author whose work, written in English, has been published in the past year - represent stiff competition. The veteran Canadian Margaret Atwood's

11th novel Oryx And Crake is on the list, as is American Anne Tyler with her 16th book, The Amateur Marriage.

Booker nominee Zoe Heller's Notes On A Scandal also makes the grade along with Stella Duffy's State Of Happiness.

A 35-year-old mother of two, Ali has been at the epicentre of literary hype ever since she was named one of the 20 best young writers in Britain - before Brick Lane had been published. Once it was, the reviews were glowing - however, according to The Guardian, some members of Brick Lane's Bengali community believed her portrayal of them was "shameful and despicable".

Apart from Ali there are six other debut authors: Rupa Bajwa (The Sari Shop); Jhumpa Lahiri (The Namesake); Dinah Lee K¸ng (A Visit From Voltaire); Joan London (Gilgamesh) Chimamanda Ngozi (Purple Hibiscus); and Audrey Niffeneger (The Time Traveller's Wife).

Chair of the judging panel is comedian Sandi Toksvig, who said today: "This year's longlist is a great shelf of work where the famous and the fledgling writer, the serious and the satirical, all stand together banging the drum for the glory of the English language."

The other judges are Glasgow city council library chief Karen Cunningham, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC, author Minette Walters and Guardian Weekend magazine editor Katharine Viner.