Elizabeth McCracken has been announced as the winner of this year’s Wingate Literary Prize.

Now in its 47th year, the annual £4,000 prize is awarded to the best fiction or non-fiction book “to translate the idea of Jewishness to the general reader”.

Announced as the winner at an event at JW3 on Wednesday night, McCracken’s The Hero of This Book is said to be “a taut, ground-breaking novel about a writer's relationship with her larger-than-life Jewish mother – and about the very nature of writing”.

The novel, published by Jonathan Cape, is also described as “a searing examination of grief and renewal, and of a deeply felt relationship between a child and her parents” that is both “comic and heartbreaking”. It’s the American author’s most autobiographical piece of fiction to date.

The Hero of This Book cover

The author of eight books, McCracken has been chosen as one of Granta’s 20 best American writers under 40, has served on the faculty at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and holds the James Michener Chair for Fiction at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Hero of This Book beat five other shortlisted works: 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.

The prize-giving event featured the winner and Emily Kasriel, trustee of the Wingate Foundation, in conversation with the judges who are the chair Benjamin Markovits, Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Natasha Solomons and Rabbi Lindsey Taylor-Guthartz.

The only UK literary award of its kind, the Wingate Literary Prize, now run in association with JW3, was established in 1977 by the late Harold Hyam Wingate. It attracts nominations from around the world and previous winners include Amos Oz, Zadie Smith, Oliver Sacks, David Grossman and Nicole Krauss.

The judges said: “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.”