Melbourne writer A.S. Patrić has won the 2016 Miles Franklin Literary Award for his debut novel, Black Rock White City.

Patrić will take home $60,000 for winning the nation’s top prize for fiction with his work which highlights the immigration experience in Australia.

He took out the prize ahead of other award-winning writers, Peggy Frew, Myfanwy Jones, Lucy Treloar and Charlotte Wood.

The book is set in the 1990s and follows the life of a couple, a former poet and academic, who escape war-torn Yugoslavia and end up living in Melbourne as cleaners.

Commenting on behalf of the judging panel, Richard Neville from the State Library of NSW said the work offered a “powerful and raw” account of the migrant experience in Australia.

The 2016 Miles Franklin winner. Photo: Supplied

The award, which aims to support Australian writers, was established in 1954 through the bequest of My Brilliant Career author, Miles Franklin.

Patrić, who is a bookseller in St Kilda, was shortlisted for the 2013 Queensland Literary Awards for his collection of short stories, Las Vegas for Vegans.

Accepting the award in Melbourne tonight, Patrić said it was “good to be in this reality”.

He said the book took him more than six years to write, congratulated the other finalists and said Australian literature was “vibrant, vigorous and brave”.

His two young daughters, dressed in tutus, hugged him as he went to accept the award.AS-Patric