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It took Ganeshananthan two decades to write her novel.

She beat the likes of Irish author and Booker Prize winner Anne Enright and Australian author Kate Grenville to the top prize.

Ganeshananthan was previously longlisted in 2009 with her debut novel Love Marriage.

Chair of the judges for the fiction prize, author Monica Ali, said: “Brotherless Night is a brilliant, compelling and deeply moving novel that bears witness to the intimate and epic-scale tragedies of the Sri Lankan civil war.

“In rich, evocative prose, Ganeshananthan creates a vivid sense of time and place and an indelible cast of characters.

“Her commitment to complexity and clear-eyed moral scrutiny combines with spellbinding storytelling to render Brotherless Night a masterpiece of historical fiction.”

The novel follows Sashi, a 16-year-old aspiring doctor, growing up in Jaffna in the 1980s. Her close family is torn apart by the onset of civil war.