AWARD-winning writer Robert Edric has reimagined the story of the Brontë family for his latest novel.

Sanctuary focuses on Branwell Brontë, the tortured brother of the famous writing sisters of Haworth.

The novel is described as a lacerating and moving fictionalised portrait of the self-destruction of one of literary history’s great bystanders.

Edric focuses on Branwell, unexhibited artist, unacknowledged writer, sacked railwayman, disgraced tutor and spurned lover.

Branwell returns to Haworth Parsonage – now the Brontë Parsonage Museum – to the crushing disappointment of his father and sisters.

As the women’s success grows, Branwell’s health is failing rapidly, his circle of friends is shrinking fast, and his own literary aspirations have been abandoned.

Attempting to restore himself to a creative and fulfilling existence, he returns to the drugs, alcohol and morbid-self-delusion of his earlier life.

Robert Edric, born in 1956, has won leading fiction prizes for novels including Winter Garden, A New Ice Age, Peacetime and The Book Of The Heathen.

Gathering The Water was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2006 and In Zodiac Light was shortlisted for the Dublin Impac (correct) Prize in 2010.

Edric, who lives in Yorkshire, most recently wrote The Monster’s Lament. The Daily Telegraph said his novels constituted “one of the most astonishing bodies of work” to appear from a single author in a generation.

Edric’s latest book is said to shine a penetrating light on one of the most celebrated and perennially fascinating families in Britain’s creative history.

Sanctuary was released this month by leading publisher Doubleday, costing £17.99 time in hardback.