The novel A Long Long Way by Sebastian Barry was last night announced as the winner of the €10,000 Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award at the opening of Listowel Writers' Week.
The novel is about a soldier in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers during the first World War. It is set against a backdrop of the Easter Rising.
The other contenders in the shortlist this year were John Banville's The Sea, Jennifer Johnston's Grace and Truth, Dermot Bolger's The Family on Paradise Pier and Nick Laird's Utterly Monkey.
Frank McCourt, the Pulitzer Prize winner who opened the festival, said: "An invitation to writers' week is more than a feather in the writer's cap, it is the cap."
McCourt replaced actor Jeremy Irons who was to have opened the festival but could not be in Listowel because of engagements in London.
The South African Nobel and Booker Prize winner J M Coetzee is among the literary stars at this year's festival. He will read at the Listowel Arms Hotel on Saturday afternoon.
Also in Listowel are John Banville, Jennifer Johnston, Clive James, poet Rita Ann Higgins and journalist Ed Moloney.
An Amnesty International event this afternoon will hear the voices of writers and artists who have been banned, imprisoned or murdered for expressing their views. Readings will be performed by Robert Ballagh, Michael D Higgins, Judith Mok and Sean Og O hAilpin.
On Saturday there will be a special tribute to the late Michael Harnett, poet and regular festival visitor.