Room named novel of 2010 at Irish Book Awards

Emma Donoghue has won the novel of the year prize at the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Awards 2010 for Room.

Donoghue failed to scoop the Man Booker Prize for Fiction last month, when her bestselling novel - which tells the tale of a mother and child held captive in a garden shed - was passed over for The Finkler Question by Howard Jacobson.

In winning the Bord Gais Energy Irish Book Award for best novel, the author saw off competition from a shortlist that included Colm Toibin's Brooklyn, Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, Paul Murray's Skippy Dies, Ghost Light by Joseph O'Connor and Roddy Doyle's The Dead Republic.

Collecting her prize last night (November 25th), Donoghue said she wrote the book as an inspirational story about breaking free from the confines of your life.

Earlier this year, the writer denied that the Josef Fritzl case was the sole inspiration for Room, after critics highlighted the similarities between her novel and the Austrian's horrific crimes.

'To say Room is based on the Fritzl case is too strong. I'd say it was triggered by it,' she told the Guardian.