And the women’s fiction winner is...

AUTHOR Ruth Ozeki has won the Women’s Prize for Fiction for her novel The Book Of Form And Emptiness.

The US-Canadian, 66, beat contenders including Maggie Shipstead’s Great Circle and The Sentence by Louise Erdrich.

Her fourth novel, about a boy of 13 who starts to hear the voices of objects after his father dies, was described as a ‘complete joy to read’. Mary Ann Sieghart, who was chairman of the judges, hailed ‘its warmth, intelligence, humour and poignancy’.

Miss Ozeki, who is a Zen Buddhist priest, was shortlisted for the 2013 Booker Prize for her novel A Tale For The Time Being. Her other books are My Year Of Meats and All Over Creation. The Women’s Prize was set up after the Booker did not shortlist any women in 1991. Winners receive £30,000 and a sculpture called the Bessie.