£60,000 Dylan Thomas prize goes to globetrotting debut author * Richard Lea

The Vietnamese-born writer Nam Le has been awarded 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 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.