The Baileys Women’s Prize For Fiction yesterday revealed its 2014 shortlist, exactly one month after the longlist was initially published. Those 20 titles have been pared down to work from six authors, whose number includes a previous winner, one previously shortlisted and three debuting novelists.

The six nominees are: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (winner in 2007 for Half of a Yellow Sun and currently enjoying more mainstream attention than ever before thanks to being sampled on a little album you might have heard); Burial Rites by Hannah Kent (debut novel #1); The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri; The Undertaking by Audrey Magee (debut novel #2); A Girl is a Half Formed Thing by Eimar McBride (debut novel #3); and The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt (nominated in 2003 for her previous novel, The Little Friend). Amongst the notable titles that didn’t make the shortlist are Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam, Rachel Kushner’s The Flamethrowers and Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries.

The winner will be announced on 4 June at a ceremony in London’s Royal Festival Hall. The judging panel is chaired by Helen Fraser, who is ably supported by Mary Beard, Caitlin Moran, Denise Mina and Sophie Raworth.

This year’s award is the first to be presented under the name of the Baileys Women’s Prize For Fiction, with the liqueur announcing its sponsorship of the prize last June following the withdrawal of sponsorship from telecommunications company Orange after the 2012 prize. That means that last year’s winner, AM Homes (who won for her novel May We Be Forgiven), occupies the unique position of having a prize trophy bereft of any kind of corporate interference, winning as she did in the one year the prize was simply known as the Women’s Prize For Fiction – Orange sponsored the prize from its inception in 1996 until it ceased to operate as an individual company and was subsumed into EE.