A Chinese writer from Beijing, who arrived in the US in 1996 to study medicine and has since settled in California to write, has won the first Frank O'Connor International Short Story competition.
Yiyun Li took the €50,000 prize, the largest in the world for a volume of short stories, with her first collection, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers.
Although US writers David Means and Bret Anthony Johnston had been expected to decide the outcome between them from a short list which also included another US writer Alice Hoffman and Australian Tim Winton with emerging Latvian David Bezmozgis, Li's tales of life in China and Chinese Americans living in the US are gentle and quietly appealing, if all-seeing.
There are echoes of Amy Tan's thesis of cultural identity and the need to assimilate, albeit explored with a stronger political nuance.
Interestingly, while the absence of William Trevor from the short list had been noted, Li, already winner of the Paris Review's Plimpton Prize for first fiction, referred to Trevor's influence on her development as a writer.
At a discussion on Saturday, US writers returned to the presence of Trevor and an earlier Irish master, Frank O'Connor. O'Connor's influence continues to shape writers from across the world.
Before reading from his own work, Corpus Christi, Bret Anthony Johnston first read an extract from an O'Connor story. O'Connor's widow and one of his daughters were in the audience.
While many writers recall the moment they had a collection of stories accepted by a publisher on the condition that a novel is forthcoming, the consensus among readers and writers is that the short story achieves a perfection which eludes the novel form.
Henry James described the novel as a "baggy monster" and there have been many baggy monsters published. The genius of the short story lies in its demanding exactness and ability to capture the moment.
In the title story of Li's winning collection, when a retired widower rocket scientist arrives in the US to visit his recently divorced daughter, he discovers how far apart they really are. The only closeness he experiences is with another outsider, an old lady from Iran.
Neither of them speaks the same language and they have little English between them: "He does not understand much of what she is saying, but he feels her joy in talking to him, the same joy he feels listening to her."
Director of the Munster Literary Centre and administrator of the prize Patrick Cotter agrees that the short story is more than alive and well and increasingly international. The Frank O'Connor International Short Story competition not only honours a great writer, it celebrates a major literary form.
"We want it to be awarded every second year, but we need a sponsor," he says. "Any ideas?"
