Irish author Sebastian Barry has won the Costa Book of the Year Award tonight for his novel 'The Secret Scripture' - despite judges being unhappy with the ending.
Watch the RTÉ News report on Sebastian Barry's win.
Watch an extended interview with Sebastian Barry.
Chairman of the judges Matthew Parris revealed that the decision was close run with Adam Foulds for 'The Broken Word', with judges split five to four at one point.
Barry's triumph comes after he missed out on the Man Booker Prize for Fiction last October.
The Costa Book of the Year, which has a £25,000 prize, recognises the most enjoyable books of the past year by writers based in the UK and Ireland.
Originally established in 1971 by Whitbread, Costa took over the sponsorship of the prize in 2006.
The category winners were selected from 616 entries, the highest number ever received.
The winner was announced at a ceremony in London.
'The Secret Scripture' centres on Roseanne McNulty, perhaps nearing her 100th birthday, who faces an uncertain future as the hospital where she has spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure.
Over the weeks leading up to the upheaval, she often talks to her psychiatrist Dr Grene.
Parris described it as an "extraordinarily close finish" among the judges.
He said: "'The Broken Word' jolly nearly pipped 'The Secret Scripture' to the post, but not quite."
Parris said there was a huge amount of support for both books.
He continued: "The feeling of many of the judges with 'The Secret Scripture' was that there was a lot wrong with it and it was flawed in many ways.
"Almost nobody liked the ending (and) for some that was fatal to their support for the book.
"Most people thought that Dr Grene's voice, the psychiatrist's voice, didn't work nearly as well as Roseanne's.
"But most people thought that in Roseanne a narrator had been created of such transcendence that that redeemed all the other structural weaknesses in the book."
Judges deliberated for an hour-and-a-quarter and Parris said it was very convivial, although some judges simply could not understand the decision to which others had come.
The final judging panel included comedian Alexander Armstrong, journalist Michael Buerk and actresses Rosamund Pike and Pauline McLynn.
Parris said the decision was absolutely not a compromise.
"It was unanimous in the sense that there was almost nobody there who simply couldn't support 'The Secret Scripture', possibly there was no one there who couldn't support 'The Secret Scripture'."
He said of the nine judges there were five for 'The Secret Scripture' and four for 'The Broken Word', and one of the five for 'The Secret Scripture' wavered.
"So it really was a knife edge right up to the end," he said.
Parris said he thought seven or eight of the nine judges thought the winning book was one of great brilliance.
"It's not a matter of people not caring for it or not appreciating it," he said.
Asked if he thought flaws in 'The Secret Scripture' had stopped it winning the Booker Prize, Parris said: "I wonder. I don't know. I was surprised at the unanimity that the ending didn't work."
He continued: "But again I think there was a feeling amongst a lot of the judges that many great works are also flawed. 'The Tempest', after all the ending isn't very good."
He said judges did not always say when voting had been tight but the minority felt so passionately that it seemed worth saying.
Parris added: "Buy both ['The Secret Scripture' and 'The Broken Word']."
He said he did not think splitting the prize was an option and he was not in favour of doing so anyway.
Summing up the work, Parris said: "Sebastian Barry has created a voice that transcends any of the problems there might be with this novel."
He described the character of Roseanne as: "one of the great narrative voices in contemporary fiction ... a lot of us thought that it was in its way a poem. Her voice is poetry."
