A novel written in a single sentence has won the 2016 Goldsmiths prize and 10,000 euro  for Galway based writer, Mayo native, Mike McCormack.

Yesterday the Louisburgh native became the third Irish winner in the four-year history of the award that was set up to reward fiction that “breaks the mould or opens up new possibilities for the novel form”.

Mike McCormack’s Solar Bones is set on All Souls Day in November 2008 and takes place inside the mind of Marcus Conway, a middle-aged engineer from County Mayo, who is brought back from the dead to contemplate “a county with a unique history of people starving and mortifying themselves for higher causes and principles”.

The novel emerged as winner at a ceremony in London yesterday from a six-strong shortlist, which included Deborah Levy’s Booker shortlisted Hot Milk and The Lesser Bohemians by the first winner of the Goldsmiths, Eimear McBride.