Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld and Dublin-based writer Hugo Hamilton were on Wednesday awarded two of France's most prestigious literature prizes for best foreign book.

Seventy-two-year-old Appelfeld's The Story of A Life won the Medicis prize for his account of a childhood in Eastern Europe, World War II, and after the war.

Hamilton won the Femina prize for his account of his Irish-German childhood The Speckled People.

Published in France under the title Sang Impur (Impure Blood), it is only the second of the 51-year-old author's works to be translated into French.

The main Femina award went to Jean-Paul Dubois for Une Vie Francaise (A French Life), a family saga that follows the changes in French society since the late 1950s.

The Femina award, which was created exactly 100 years ago, bears no cash prize but can be a big boost for sales.

Marie Nimier's book La Reine du Silence (The Queen of Silence) won the main Medicis award with a look into the author's relationship with her father, Roger Nimier, also a writer.