Joshua Ferris wins Dylan Thomas prize

Ferris beats favourites Eleanor Catton and Eimear McBride to win the £30,000 prize for his novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour

The 2014 Dylan Thomas prize was billed as a Champions League final between already multiple award-winning Eleanor Cattons The Luminaries and Eimear McBrides A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing. But in the end, after a long judging session, the £30,000 cheque, awarded in Thomass centenary year, went to Joshua Ferris for his deeply funny and deeply serious novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, in which dentistry, baseball and existential dread combine with contemporary New York, unlikely Old Testament peoples and the modern malaise of being emotionally disconnected in a hyper-connected age.

As a prize that traditionally has to decide between all types of fiction - this years the shortlist featured poetry, drama, short stories and novels from writers Owen Sheers, Kei Miller, Naomi Wood and Kseniya Melnik, as well Ferris, McBride and Catton the final showdown between Ferriss angsty philosophical humour and McBrides re-invigorated modernist take on Irish gothic made the job of myself and fellow judges, chaired by Peter Florence of the Hay festival and including musician and broadcaster Cerys Matthews and novelist and poet Tishani Doshi, a task of almost comic difficulty.

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