Jamaican novelist Marlon James has won the 2015 Man Booker Prize for Fiction, worth £50,000, for his third novel A Brief History of Seven Killings.

The book, which was acclaimed on publication by Irvine Welsh and Kei Miller, tells the story of the attempted assassination of singer Bob Marley against the background of the political turbulence of Jamaica in the 1970s and 80s, when gangland killings and CIA agents made the island capital, Kingston, one of the most dangerous cities in the world.

James was shortlisted alongside British authors Sunjeev Sahota and Tom McCarthy, Nigerian Chigozie Obioma, and US writers Anne Tyler and Hanya Yanagihara, whose A Little Life was the bookies favourite to win.

The judges for this year's award included Scottish poet and novelist John Burnside and the novelist wife of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Francis Osborne. Chair of the judges, academic Michael Wood, said: "This book is startling in its range of voices and registers, running from the patois of the street posse to The Book of Revelation. It is a crime novel that moves beyond the world of crime and takes us deep into a recent history we know far too little about. It moves at a terrific pace and will come to be seen as a classic of our times."

In addition to his £50,000 prize and trophy, James receives a designer bound edition of his book and a further £2,500 for being shortlisted. Last year’s winning novel, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan, has sold 300,000 copies in the UK and almost 800,000 worldwide.

This was the second year that the prize, first awarded in 1969, has been open to writers of any nationality, writing originally in English and published in the UK. Previously, the prize was open only to authors from the UK & Commonwealth, Republic of Ireland and Zimbabwe. A Brief History of Seven Killings is the first Man Booker Prize winner for independent publisher, Oneworld Publications.