The novelist Naomi Alderman has won The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for her first book, Disobedience, about the tightly-knit world of North London's Orthodox Jews.

The judges were unanimous in their decision and singled out the 32-year-old’s novel for its wit, pace, intelligence and daring.

Disobedience, published by Viking Penguin, recounts the upheaval when a rabbi's daughter, who has escaped the pious community of Hendon for worldly New York, returns home for her father's funeral.

Susannah Herbert, Sunday Times Literary Editor, told Ms Alderman: "The heroine's confrontation with the tradition-bound faith of her fathers could, in other hands, have been a one-sided battle.

“But you have given both sides a fair hearing: you have created a space where moral complexity is allowed to exist. You may be a 'young' writer as defined by this award, but this is a very grown-up book."

Disobedience, published in March 2006, describes a world in which women are second-class citizens, prevented from studying the Talmud and made to sit behind a curtain at the back of the synagogue. Every morning, in public prayers, the men thank God for not making them female. When the heroine comes back from New York, her arrival precipitates a mighty clash between faith and enlightenment, old and new.

Ms Alderman was among four writers, under 35, who were shortlisted for the sought-after prize. The others were; Horatio Clare, for his memoir Running For the Hills, Rory Stewart for Occupational Hazards: My Time Governing in Iraq and John Stubbs for his biography, John Donne: The Reformed Soul.

The award, since its inception in 1991, has proved a reliable guide to young talent and has seen previous winners, including the poet Simon Armitage, and novelists Sarah Waters and Zadie Smith, go on to become significant literary figures.

Ms Alderman was presented with a cheque for £5,000 at The Sunday Times Oxford Literary Festival yesterday.

She grew up in Hendon, north London, and was educated at South Hampstead High School. After reading Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Lincoln College, Oxford, she worked in legal publishing in London and New York.

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