Irish author Kevin Barry beat the likes of Michel Houellebecq and Haruki Murakami to take home this year's Impac Award for his debut novel "City of Bohane."

Barry was ecstatic after being declared this year's recipient of the Impac Award. The author beat the likes of Michel Houellebecq and Haruki Murakami to take home the award for his debut novel "City of Bohane." The Impac award worth approximately $133,000 is reportedly the richest award for a single novel published in English.

"It's a really cool thing to see yourself alongside writers who you've read for years and admired and had fun with," Barry said.

His debut novel draws a picture of a future for the west of Ireland stripped of technology, in which gangsters deliver vengeance on foot or by tram in a world without cars, laptops or cellphones. His characters dress flamboyantly in mink coats and beanie hats, or all-in-one jump suits and find poetry in an invented vernacular which swoops from firecracker dialogue to bleak pastoral.

"It's written in Technicolor," he said. "It's intended to be a big, visceral entertainment as well as a serious language experiment."

The author revealed he has no plans as of now about how he will spend the award money and says writers don't have a salary as such.

"You have good years and lean years," he said. "This award makes it a good year. It buys you a lot of time to be sitting at your desk, inventing deranged little worlds. It allows you to keep going - that's the definition of success for a writer."