You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
The Vietnam born writer Nam Le has won the 2008 Dylan Thomas prize, picking up a cheque for £60,000 at a ceremony in Swansea last night for his first collection of short stories, The Boat.
The Guardian reports that the chairman of the judges, Peter Florence, hailed Le as a "winner worthy of Dylan Thomas".
"Nam tackles his own background and circumstances as well as that of others with a clear eye, focused intelligence and wonderful use of words," Florence said. "He is, in this panel's opinion, a phenomenal literary talent, and I look forward to following his career as it progresses."
Born in Vietnam and raised in Australia, the New York-based Le ranges across the globe with stories set in locations from the streets of Tehran to a tiny Australian fishing village. The opening story, "Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice", grapples directly with his own heritage, with a young writer called Nam urged by his friends to turn to his father's experiences in Vietnam for literary inspiration. It is a theme he returns to in the collection's final story, also entitled "The Boat", a straightforward account of people struggling to escape from Communist Vietnam by boat.
It is intended to encourage creative talent in writers under the age of 30, and is open to works of fiction, poetry and drama in English - all genres in which Thomas wrote. The inaugural prize in 2006 was also won by a collection of short stories, Rachel Tresize's Fresh Apples.