Debut novelist beats Aravind Adiga

London bookseller and first-time novelist Evie Wyld beat top literary award winners Aravind Adiga and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie among others to land the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

Evie Wyld

London bookseller and first-time novelist Evie Wyld beat top literary award winners Aravind Adiga and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie among others to land the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.

Wyld, 29, won the annual award for After the Fire, a Still Small Voice, set in eastern Australia and tackling the themes of fathers and sons, the wars they fight and the things they never know about each other.

"From the wars in Korea and Vietnam to the back country of Eastern Australia, Wyld captures the inflections of male speech and male bonding in a way that feels both acute and realistic," said Louise Doughty, chair of the judges.

Wyld, who lives in London where she works in a small independent book shop, has travelled frequently to Australia, where her family has a sugar cane farm in New South Wales. Among the other shortlisted authors for the 5,000-pound ($8,250) award were Adiga, who won the 2008 Man Booker Prize for The White Tiger, and Adichie, who won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2007 for Half of a Yellow Sun.