Author Colm Tóibín has been announced as the winner of the Hawthornden Prize for his novel Nora Webster.
The Wexford author received the award at a ceremony in the London Library on Wednesday (July 22).
Tóibín's win follows Costa Award and Folio Prize nominations for the book, which tells the story of a young widow in 1960s Ireland.
Established in 1919, the Hawthornden Prize differs from other literary awards in that there is no shortlist and authors receive no notice that they are under consideration. Past winners include Ali Smith, Michael Longley and Alan Bennett.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio 1's Morning Ireland this morning, Tóibín explained that it took 13 years to finish the book, saying: "It's really taken up an awful lot of time. I started it in the spring of 2000, and I didn't finish it until September 2013. I did other things in the meantime, obviously, but I thought about it every day and I added things to it and I was always trying to work out different ways of doing it. I sort of miss it, it was a big project."
The author also said that he found it difficult to write as it is such a personal story, "There were things in it that had mattered to me that had happened, other things that are invented, it's a mixture of things. But it's about those years in Enniscorthy when I was growing up after my father had died.
"So it was odd last night even to hear the name of the book pronounced with English accents, and the judges were English, people who've never been in Enniscorthy, because the book is so rooted in the town. It was heartening just to have other people being able to respond to something that remains so personal."
Mary Mount, his editor at publishers Viking, said of Tóibín winning the Hawthornden Prize: "Over the almost one hundred years of its existence, the Hawthornden Prize has been awarded to many of the greatest writers of our time – Graham Greene, VS Naipaul, William Trevor, to name just three – and it is wonderful, and fitting, to see Colm Tóibín join that list."
A movie version of Toibin's novel Brooklyn, starring Saorise Ronan and Domhnall Gleeson goes on release in November.
