The pair of £10,000 prizes, awarded by the University of Edinburgh, were announced Monday night by broadcaster Sally Magnusson at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

The follow-up to A Girl Is A Half Formed Thing, McBride's second novel traces a love affair between an 18-year-old Irish woman and an older actor in London.

McBride, who grew up in the west of Ireland, topped a shortlist which included three other writers including Jo Baker for A Country Road, A Tree, Garth Greenwell for What Belongs to You and C.E. Morgan for The Sport of Kings.

Dr. Alex Lawrie, fiction judge for the prize said “Eimear McBride’s astonishing second novel is full of wit, energy and nerve, an extraordinary rendering of a young woman’s consciousness as she eagerly embarks on a new life in London.”