10-year opus a $266,000 winner

A Canadian professor of English has won the world's richest prize for a single work of fiction, scooping 100,000 punts ($266,000) for a novel that took him 10 years to write.

Alistair MacLeod, from the University of Windsor, in southern Ontario, won the annual International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for No Great Mischief, the story of a Scottish family who emigrated to Canada in 1779.

It was chosen from a shortlist of works by six writers.

The judging panel said the novel, written in "a hypnotic, stately prose," was a monument to the universal human spirit.