Elizabeth McCracken’s The Hero of This Book (Jonathan Cape) has won the Wingate Literary Prize, which is awarded each year to the best fiction or non-fiction book ‘to translate the idea of Jewishness to the general reader’. The brilliantly original, tender and comic novel takes the author-narrator’s Jewish mother as its subject, and interrogates grief, family relationships and what it means to write another’s life.

The judging panel, comprised of Benjamin Markovits, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Natasha Solomons and Rabbi Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz, said of the book: ‘In a timely and timeless fashion, McCracken’s powerful writing lets you be privy to secrets you just want to shout about. A thoroughly involving read that wrestles with memory, illness, place and identity; The Hero of This Book is moving in every sense.’

Also shortlisted for the prize were Your Hearts, Your Scars by Adina Talve-Goodman, The Dissident by Paul Goldberg, Still Pictures by Janet Malcolm, Kosher Soul by Michael Twitty, and One Hundred Saturdays by Michael Frank.