14 June 2012 Last updated at 04:37 ET

British author Jon McGregor wins Impac literary award

McGregor was born in Bermuda and raised in Norfolk

British author Jon McGregor has won the 100,000 euro (£81,000) International Impac Dublin Literary Award for his third novel Even the Dogs.

The writer beat off competition from 146 other shortlisted titles to receive the accolade, the world's largest prize given to a novel published in English.

According to publisher Bloomsbury, Even the Dogs is "an intimate exploration of life at the edges of society".

McGregor is the third British author to win the lucrative prize.

Andrew Miller was the first, winning in 1999 for Ingenious Pain, while Nicola Barker won the following year with Wide Open.

Two other British novelists - Tim Pears and Animatta Forna - were among this year's ten shortlisted authors.

On his Twitter feed, McGregor said it was "a great prize" to win and that he felt "in good company".

The international judging panel, which included Irish book of the year nominee Mike McCormack praised Even the Dogs as "a fearless experiment which shows us in close-up detail the lives of a gathering of homeless addicts".

The Top 10 was whittled down from submissions nominated by 162 public libraries from 45 countries.

The award is organised by Dublin city libraries on behalf of Dublin City Council and is sponsored by Impac, an international management productivity company.

It is open to novels written in any language by authors of any nationality, provided the book has been published in or translated into English.