Fortunately the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction comes with $40,000. It is also welcome recognition for a book that had a tortuous birth and demonstrates how hard life can be for an author of challenging, original fiction that does not fit conventional categories.

Henshaw's postmodern debut novel, Out of the Line of Fire, had excellent reviews and sales in 1988. But with a young family he chose a secure career as a curator at the National Gallery in Canberra, and only returned to his long-gestated second novel after he retired four years ago.

"I feel I had a seed pod in a box for 20 years and I would look at it every now and then. I always knew that at 60 I was going to do it," he says.

"If I look at myself critically, I would not have got the sense of melancholy and tenderness 20 years ago. I don't think I had the technical skills and I wasn't there emotionally."

The Premier's award judges called The Snow Kimono "an exquisite work of art designed to deceive" and "both a gripping and tragic thriller and a highly literary conversation" between a retired French police inspector and Japanese law professor who meet in Paris and share memories of desire, ambition and loss.

Bought by Michael Heyward at Text Publishing, who instructed Henshaw to cut 40,000 words out of the manuscript, the novel impressed reviewers and was named by some as one of last year's best books.

So Henshaw was shocked that 32 American publishers turned it down. "It was a bit of a downer," he says. "I thought I'd written something that was beautiful, that was commercially accessible, but I had to rethink the market.

"I told myself it's not a bad book, but it's a mismatch with the American market, which has got very conservative and is always looking for the new young hotshot author."

There is, however, a happy ending.

The Snow Kimono was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, though Henshaw complained publicly that finalists – impecunious writers – had to pay their own travel costs to the awards night. (NSW covered costs for Monday night's awards event.)

His book has now been sold to publishers in "the big five" countries – France, where it came out this month, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden. Not surprising, perhaps, for a novel largely set in France and with a moody, philosophical atmosphere.

Text will also market the book in the US, where the bookstore chain Barnes & Noble has chosen it as a featured title for June.

"Man, that's pretty damned good," Henshaw says. "I'm ecstatic: 2015 is shaping up to be a really good year."

Mark Henshaw will speak at two Sydney Writers' Festival events on Thursday May 21. See swf.org.au.

Susan Wyndham was a judge of the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction.