Australia's Kate Grenville has won the prestigious Orange Prize for female writing, beating bookies' favourite Margaret Atwood for the award designed to break down so-called literary ‘laddism’.
Grenville's novel,
The Idea of Perfection
, was chosen from a shortlist of six books by writers from Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia vying for the £30,000 award, which could also boost the winner's sales.
The Sydney-born novelist was the only woman to appear on separate shortlists drawn up by female and male panels.
Male critics were drafted in as an experiment this year to analyse differences in the sexes' literary tastes, and sharp differences of opinion between the rival juries dominated newspaper coverage of the run-up to the award ceremony.
Atwood, who won the Booker prize last year for her 10th and highly acclaimed novel The Blind Assassin, entered the fray recently to defend the world's leading women-only book prize.
"The men (who commented adversely on the Orange shortlist) were like children pressing their noses against the window of a birthday party to which they weren't invited, poor things", she was quoted as saying.
Rosie Boycott, chair of the female panel of judges which picked the winner, dismissed criticism that the Orange Prize for Fiction was being opened to male judging.
It hadn't occurred to me at all that we were giving in to men, but it will be interesting to see how the shortlists differ, she told the prize's official website.
Grenville's book is a touching romance between two people who have given up on love.
Set in the eccentric backwater of Karakarook, New South Wales, it tells the story of Douglas Cheeseman, an awkward engineer with jug-handle ears, and Harley Savage, a woman too big and too abrupt for comfort.
I think it is a fantastic step on the way to breaking down those stereotypes that there are certain kinds of writing that are only by women and for women, Grenville told the BBC after receiving the award.
The other works shortlisted were The Blind Assassinby Canada's Atwood, Horse Heavenby American Pulitzer prize winner Jane Smiley, Hotel Worldby Ali Smith of Scotland,Fred & Edie by Britain's Jill Dawson and Homestead by US author Rosina Lippi.