The $50,000 Neustadt Prize, awarded every two years, is the only international literary award for which poets, playwrights and novelists are given equal consideration.

Robert Con Davis-Undiano, executive director of international magazine World Literature Today, said: “The world will quickly discover the excellence of Rohinton Mistry�s luminous fiction that the Neustadt jury acknowledged with this choice. Giving the award to Mistry is inspired.”

Mistry is the author of three novels: Such a Long Journey (1991), which won the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book), A Fine Balance (1996) and Family Matters (2002).

His latest book, The Scream, was illustrated by Tony Urquhart (2008).

The Neustadt Prize is widely considered to be the most prestigious international prize after the Nobel Prize in Literature and, in fact, is often referred to as the ‘American Nobel’ because of its record of 28 laureates, candidates or jurors who in the past 41 years have been awarded Nobel Prizes following their involvement with the Neustadt Prize.