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Smith's sixth novel, which had been shortlisted for the 2014
Man Booker Prize, focuses on an Italian Renaissance painter who
disguises herself as a man in order to pursue her artistic
passions, and on a modern teenage girl named George grappling
with the death of her mother and with her emerging sexuality.
“Ancient and modern meet and speak to each other in this tender,
brilliant and witty novel of grief, love, sexuality and
shape-shifting identity,” Chair of Judges Shami Chakrabarti said
in a statement announcing the winner.
The prize, awarded to a work of fiction written in English by a
woman anywhere in the world, carries a 30,000 pound ($46,000)
cash prize.
"It's quite amazing, I'm in shock," Smith told Reuters after the
award was announced. "That's my first response and my only
response -- it's lovely."
Smith's critically well received book intertwines the story of
the actual Renaissance artist Francesco del Cossa, who disguised
her femininity in order to create frescoes in a palazzo in
Ferrara, and the fictional George, who is struggling to cope
with the sudden death of her mother, with whom she had travelled
to Italy to see del Cossa's works.
The book has the added twist of coming in two editions, one of
which begins with del Cossa's story and the other with George's.
Smith said that novels "are always about time" and that in hers
she'd attempted to link events of 500 years ago to the present.
"Is it possible for us to be connected so immediately to people
in the past who we never knew, and whom we have nothing in
common with?," she said.
"It's about our own multiplicity and our ability to be at one
time more than just one thing -- that's what really is the
driving thing."
Smith, who was born in Inverness in August 1962 and lives in
Cambridge, won the Saltire First Book Award and a Scottish Arts
Council Award in 1995 for her first collection of stories, "Free
Love".
Her novels include "Hotel World", which was shortlisted for the
Man Booker and the Orange Prize, and "The Accidental" which won
the Whitbread Novel Award.
(Editing by Ealph Boulton)
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