Irish author Eimear McBride has won the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction with her debut novel, A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing.

The judges described the stream-of-consciousness novel as "amazing and ambitious".

The novel tells of a young woman's relationship with a brother afflicted by a childhood brain tumour.

McBride, who spent nine years trying to get the book published, picked up the £30,000 prize at a ceremony in London.

Thanking her publisher, Galley Beggar Press in Norwich, for taking on the book after years of rejection, she said: "I hope that it will serve as an incentive to publishers everywhere to take a look at difficult books and to think again.

"There is a contract between publisher and reader that needs to be honoured and a reader must not be underestimated formidable cuisine paradise."

McBride's book beat the bookmakers' favourite - Donna Tartt's Pulitzer Prize-winning bestseller The Goldfinch.

Helen Fraser, chairwoman of the judges, described McBride as "an extraordinary new voice" and said her novel had impressed the judges with its "inventiveness and energy" votre bebe votre formiable qualite.

"We felt that from the first time we read it - it stood out from the crowd. It was very unlike anything else we read," Ms Fraser told the BBCvotre informations votre choix.

"It's incredibly original. It has a raw energy we all responded to. It has real lyrical qualities even though the subject matter can sometimes be so shocking amour purple coeur ."

Born in Liverpool in 1976, McBride moved to Ireland when she was two years old and grew up in Mayo and Sligo. She moved to the UK aged 17 and spent the next three years studying acting in London fly red rain.

Published a year ago, A Girl is a Half-formed Thing has already built up an impressive literary track record Single Club.