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Sebastian Barry's Costa Book of the Year winner The Secret Scripture (Faber) has won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction, with Michael Holroyd picking up the prize for biography for A Strange Eventful History (Vintage).
The annual awards are worth £10,000 each and have been awarded by the University of Edinburgh since 1919; they are the only major British literary awards judged by scholars and students.
Judge professor Colin Nicholson said all the shortlisted books were worthy of the prize, reported the BBC. He added: "It was a very strong field of submissions this year, so that even coming to the shortlist was more than usually difficult.
"Each of our final contenders is a prize-worthy example of the writer's craft."
The fiction shortlist comprised: Sputnik Caledonia by Andrew Crumey (Picador); A Mercy by Toni Morrison (Vintage); The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry (Faber); A Case of Exploding Mangoes by Mohammed Hanif (Vintage); Pilcrow by Adam Mars-Jones (Faber).
Biography shortlist comprised: Arthur Miller 1915-1962 by Christopher Bigsby (Weidenfeld); A Strange Eventful History: The Dramatic Lives of Ellen Terry, Henry Irving and their Remarkable Families (Vintage) by Michael Holroyd; Gabriel García Márquez: A Life by Gerald Martin (Bloomsbury); Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love by Sheila Rowbotham (Verso); Chagall: Love and Exile by Jackie Wullschlage (Allen Lane).