This year’s €50,000 AKO literature prize has been won by Joke van Leeuwen for her novel Feest van het begin.

The novel, about two women, is set at the time of the French Revolution and asks ‘universal questions about beauty and truth’, according to the jury.

The AKO prize, named after the newsagents’ chain which sponsors it, is the Netherlands’ oldest commercial literary prize and was introduced in 1987.