India-born writer Kiran Desai's Booker Prize-winning novel The Inheritance of Loss has been included in the field of contenders for this year's Orange Broadband Fiction Award, in a break with tradition by the organisers of the top literary prize for women novelists.

Judges for the 30,000 pound Orange award broke with a 39-year unspoken convention by choosing this year's Man Booker and Costa Prize winning books -- Desai's novel and Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves -- on their long-list of 20.

They are understood to be free to pick either title for their shortlist or as the eventual Orange winner.

In picking Desai and Penney, the judges underline a remarkable year for women writers.

Whoever finally wins the Orange on June 6, women will have scooped all three major British literary awards.

But the decision goes far beyond this. None of the richer awards since the first of them, the Booker, was founded in 1968, has gone to a book which has previously won a sizeable rival award.

Few, if any, have even gone to titles short-listed or long-listed for a rival.

The Orange's founder and honorary director Kate Mosse said the judges had been told that they must forget whether any of the titles had been successful in any other field.

"What a book has done outside the judges' room is utterly irrelevant. This applies equally strongly at the shortlist stage and in choosing the winner. Nothing matters except the quality between the pages," Mosse added.

"Whether the sponsors have views on which books should win or not is never discussed. Orange totally supports the independence of the judges' process," Mosse said.

The judges' chair, broadcaster Muriel Gray said, "It is a preposterous idea that we would censor a book because it has won another prize. All that matters to us -- and the reading public -- is excellence."

When Desai's novel won the Man Booker Prize in October, the chair of judges, Hermione Lee, said, "It is a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness."