The author of eleven novels, Birch won the 1988 David Higham Award for the Best First Novel of the Year for Life in the Palace, and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize with The Fog Line in 1991,;[3][5] Her novel Turn Again Home was long-listed for the 2003 Man Booker Prize.[3] Her novel Jamrach's Menagerie was long-listed for the Orange Prize 2011,[6] and shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2011.[7] The book was also excerpted in The New York Times.[8]