Book nets €12k award nine years after rejections

A debut novelist has won a €12,000 prize for her book nine years after it was first rejected by publishers.

Eimear McBride picked up the Goldsmiths Prize for A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing at an event in London last night.

The novel, which is the story of a young woman’s relationship with her brother and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour, was written in just six months but was initially rejected by every publisher she sent it to.