Acclaimed Australian author Frank Moorhouse has won the $25,000 Premier's Award at the Adelaide Festival awards for literature.
The 75-year-old won the prize for Cold Light, the third in his Edith trilogy set in the world of diplomacy in the 1920s.
The novel, which followed Grand Days and Dark Place, also won the $15,000 Fiction Award.
Cold Light traces Edith Campbell Berry's return to Australia after the demise of the League of Nations and the discovery of her husband's unconventional sexuality.
She settles in Canberra and while aspiring to become the country's first female ambassador, becomes caught up in the planning of the national capital.
Moorhouse took 20 years to write Cold Light, which was short listed for the 2012 Miles Franklin Literary Award.
Dark Place won the Miles Franklin in 2001, while Grand Days won the 1994 Fiction Award at the Adelaide Festival Awards.
Moorhouse recently won the Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement.
His latest awards were announced on Saturday, on the first day of Adelaide Writers Week held in the Pioneer Women's Memorial Garden.
Moorhouse will be a highlight at the festival, speaking for an hour on Monday morning.
Ten writers shared the $167,000 prizes making up the awards, presented every two years on behalf of the South Australian premier.
Other winners included SA author Vikki Wakefield who won the Young Adult Fiction award for Friday Brown.
She also won the 2012 award for her debut novel All I Ever Wanted.
WINNERS OF THE 2014 ADELAIDE FESTIVAL AWARDS FOR LITERATURE
- Premier's Award $25,000, Frank Moorhouse for Cold Light (Vintage Books)
- Children's Literature $15,000, Catherine Jinks for A Very Unusual Pursuit (Allen & Unwin)
- Fiction $15,000, Frank Moorhouse for Cold Light (Vintage books)
- John Bray Poetry $15,000, Lisa Jacobson for The Sunlit Zone (5 Islands Press)
- Non-Fiction $15,000, Kate Richards for Madness: a Memoir (Viking/Penguin)
- Young Adult Fiction $15,000, Vikki Wakefield for Friday Brown (Text publishing)
- Wakefield Press Unpublished Manuscript $10,000, Cassie Flanagan-Willanski for Here Where We Live (short story collection)
- Jill Blewett Playwright's Award $12,500, Phillip Kavanagh for Replay (un-produced)
- Barbara Hanrahan fellowship $15,000, Jennifer Mills for Common Monsters
- Max Fatchen Fellowship $15,000, Helen Dinmore (writing as Catherine Norton) for Falling
- Tangkanungku Pintyanthi Fellowship $15,000, Ali Cobby Eckermann for Hopes Crossing
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