Belfast writer Lucy Caldwell wins Walter Scott fiction prize
BBCBelfast writer Lucy Caldwell has won the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction for her novel These Days.
She was announced as the winner at the Borders Book Festival which is taking place in Melrose.
She took the £25,000 top prize for her story of the aerial bombardment of her home city during World War Two.
The judges of the award praised her winning work for its "pitch-perfect, engrossing narrative ringing with emotional truth".
Founded in 2009, the Walter Scott Prize has become one of Britain's most important literary awards with previous winners including Sebastian Barry, Robert Harris, Andrea Levy and Hilary Mantel.
The judges said Ms Caldwell's novel was a "a story of both great violence and great tenderness".
She immersed herself in eyewitness accounts while she was writing the book, interviewing survivors, including a 103-year-old.
She said winning the award was a "bit overwhelming".
"One of my absolute favourite authors is Hilary Mantel who was twice a recipient of this prize," she said.
"She wrote some words that are on the cover of my hardback and I thought that was the greatest privilege of my writing life to have my name alongside hers on the cover.
"So to win a prize for historical fiction which she and so many other great writers have won in the past feels incredible."
The other shortlisted novels for the award were The Geometer Lobachevsky by Adrian Duncan, Act of Oblivion by Robert Harris, The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry, The Sun Walks Down by Fiona McFarlane, Ancestry by Simon Mawer and I Am Not Your Eve by Devika Ponnambalam.