Veteran Israeli writer Avraham B. Yehoshua has been awarded France's Medicis literature prize for a translated work with his novel "The Retrospective".

A sombre work that explores the relationship between life and art, "The Retrospective" is centred around an ageing film director who is invited to the Spanish pilgrim city of Santiago de Campostela for a retrospective of his work.

As he meanders down memory lane with his former screenwriter and an ageing actress who served as their muse, the themes of mortality, the limits of memory and the struggle of artistic creation are explored.

Yehoshua, 75, has won a string of international literary awards and has had his books translated from Hebrew into more than 30 languages.

He is well-known and popular in France, where he lived for three years in the 1960s.

The main Medicis prize, which is awarded to writers who, in the opinion of the jury, have not achieved the renown their work deserves, was awarded to Emmanuelle Pireyre, 43, for her fourth novel, "Feerie generale".