The US author beat five other writers to take the 30,000 pound prize during a ceremony at London's Royal Festival Hall, on Wednesday. The award, which recognises the work of fiction written by women around the world, was set up in 1996. Author Francesca Kay took the New Writers award for her debut novel, An Equal Stillness. Broadcaster Fi Glover, chair of judges, praised Robinson's "kind, wise, enriching novel" as "exquisitely crafted". She said: "We were unanimously agreed - it is a profound work of art."

Robinson is the author of two other novels, Housekeeping (1981), which was chosen as one of the Observer's 100 greatest novels of all time and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize, and Gilead (2004), which won the Pulitzer and the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has also written two works of non-fiction, Mother Country and The Death of Adam, and teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop.

Home centres on Jack, the prodigal son of the Boughton family, who returns home looking for refuge and tries to make peace with a past littered with trouble and pain. Jonathan Ruppin, from Foyles bookshop, said: "Robinson is simply one of the outstanding prose stylists of recent years; she will undoubtedly come to be seen as essential as Nabokov or Conrad. "In picking this as this year's winner, the judges have made a real statement about lyrical power of fiction, beyond its basic function to tell stories."

Her reclusive streak was revealed on stage this morning at the Guardian Hay festival, where she confessed her ideal situation would be "to have enough money ... [to] write and not be published". She doesn't, she told Guardian Review editor Lisa Allardice, like reviews or critics. "It's a very uncomfortable thing for a writer, we're very tender," she said. Writing is the thing she does best, how she earns her money, but "not being published would be great", Atkinson continued. "When I say that to other writers they look at me as if I'm totally insane."

Even though she doesn't feel a need to be published, she said she "probably need[s] to write", a distinction which JD Salinger – who hasn't published a word since 1965, despite rumours of shelves groaning with manuscripts – would surely recognise. But it's not an "overwhelming burning urge," she added, suggesting she would "rather potter about in the garden". "My work is not my life," she said. "I started writing quite late, I didn't have that 'writing is everything, my art is all'. You have to be able to recognise the difference between the two."

Usually it takes her two years to write a book, she said, but if she were locked in a room, she could do it in the three months it took her to write her Whitbread-winning novel, Behind the Scenes at the Museum. "Probably not needing to be published would give me more time to think about a book," she said, and "without the time pressure" she could write faster.

"Geoff Dyer is a naturally funny writer," said one of the judges, the broadcaster James Naughtie. "It's a curious book in a way – it has two locations, one in Venice and the second in India. It's a book of two halves and it actually becomes a rather serious book – at least it takes on the serious subject of our spiritual journey in the world."

"But the whole spirit of the book is naturally comic," he continued, "and what is quite clear about Dyer is that he's got a real feel for the absurd. That's why we thought the should win this year."

The book is a worthy winner, beating off competition from Baboon Metaphysics, Curbside Consultation of the Colon and The Large Sieve and its Applications to take the prize, but Parker, who has described himself as "the most published author in the history of the planet", might just as easily have been nominated for his vast library of other books. If they had the necessary disposable income, who could resist the niche appeal of The 2007-2012 Outlook for Lemon-Flavoured Bottled Water in Japan, a snip at $495, or The 2007 Import and Export Market for Household Refrigerators in Czech Republic (just $112)?

Parker, a professor of management science at French business school Insead, achieves his prolific authorship thanks to his invention - and patenting - of a machine which writes books, creating them from internet and database searches in order to eliminate or substantially reduce "the costs associated with human labour, such as authors, editors, graphic artists, data analysts, translators, distributors and marketing personnel."

The list, drawn from any fiction published in English -- including translations -- is made up of nominations from 157 libraries in 117 cities and 41 countries worldwide. Selected books include most of the literary novels rewarded elsewhere in the last year, as well as titles less familiar to British readers. Perhaps the most unexpected appearance on the list is from Ken Follett, best known for his bestselling techno-thrillers, whose World Without End is the sequel to his medieval epic The Pillars of the Earth.

As for likely winners, any bookmaker would likely zero in on Khalid Hosseini, who received 18 nominations for A Thousand Splendid Suns, five ahead of the next most-popular book. Divisadero by Michael Ondaatje was nominated by 13 libraries, just ahead of Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, which received 10 nods.

The selected titles now go forward for judging to a panel of five novelists - Gabrielle Alioth, Rachel Billington, Vesna Goldsworthy, James Ryan and Timothy Taylor - chaired by the former US appeals judge Eugene R Sullivan. The prize, now in its 14th year, has previously gone to authors including Orhan Pamuk, Michel Houellebecq and Javier Marias. Last year's prize was taken by Lebanese novelist Rawi Hage for De Niro's Game.

Mr. Adiga, who lives in Mumbai, was born in India and brought up partly in Australia. He studied at Columbia and Oxford and is a former correspondent for Time magazine in India. He is the second youngest writer to win the award; Ben Okri was 32 when he won for The Famished Road in 1991.

Michael Portillo, a former cabinet minister and the chairman of this year's panel of judges, praised Mr. Adiga's novel, saying that the short list had contained a series of "extraordinarily readable page-turners." However, Mr. Adiga's book had prevailed, he said, "because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure."

Mr. Adiga said his book was an "attempt to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India - the voice of the colossal underclass. This voice was not captured," he added, "and I wanted to do so without sentimentality or portraying them as mirthless humorless weaklings as they are usually."