Novelist A.S. Byatt won a Booker Prize for her 1990 novel Possession. Her contribution to literature will be recognized at Montreal's Blue Metropolis festival. (Michael Trevillion)

British writer A.S. Byatt, author of Babel Tower and Possession, has won the 2009 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prize.

The $10,000 award will be presented to the novelist and essayist during the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival next April.

She also plans the international launch of her new novel, The Children's Book, at the Montreal literary festival.

It's the first time a British writer has been chosen for the honour, which has previously been won by Margaret Atwood, Michel Tremblay, Norman Mailer and Carlos Fuentes.

Byatt, 72, is fluent in French and German. Her sister is the writer Margaret Drabble.

Born Antonia Susan Byatt in Yorkshire, she was educated at Newnham College Cambridge, Bryn Mawr in Pennsylvania and Somerville College Oxford.

Her first novel, The Shadow of the Sun, was published in 1964 and she has written more than 24 works of fiction.

Her writing is often described as intellectual, and she is fascinated with history and with social movements.

In 1990, she won the Booker Prize for Possession, which tells the story of two researchers whose contemporary relationship follows the same pattern as the 19th century poets they study.

Both Possession and Angels & Insects have been adapted into films.

The Children's Book is about a famous writer who is writing a private book for each of her children. It deals with childhood and family secrets, against the backdrop of the Edwardian world with the First World War looming on the horizon.