The historical fiction novel These Days by Belfast author Lucy Caldwell was awarded the Walter Scott Prize.
She received the prize, which was announced at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose.
For her account of her hometown's aerial bombardment during World War II, she won the top prize of £25,000.
For its "pitch-perfect, engrossing narrative ringing with emotional truth," the award's judges praised the winner's work.
Sebastian Barry, Robert Harris, Andrea Levy, and Hilary Mantel are just a few of the notable authors to have won the Walter Scott Prize since its establishment in 2009.
According to the judges, Ms. Caldwell's book is "a story of both great violence and great tenderness.".
She interviewed survivors, including a 103-year-old, and immersed herself in eyewitness accounts as she wrote the book.
She said, "These Days felt so alive to me as I was writing it, so urgent - it didn't feel like 'history' at all, it didn't even feel like it had happened, it felt like it was happening as I wrote.
Adrian Duncan's The Geometer Lobachevsky, Robert Harris' Act of Oblivion, Elizabeth Lowry's The Chosen, Fiona McFarlane's The Sun Walks Down, Simon Mawer's Ancestry, and Devika Ponnambalam's I Am Not Your Eve were the other books that made the shortlist for the award.
