PULITZER PRIZE-WINNER Jhumpa Lahiri was in Cork yesterday where she was formally recognised as the winner of the fourth annual Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award.
At €35,000, it is the largest international short story prize.
In July, a jury comprising Grantaeditor Rosalind Porter, Cork city chief librarian Liam Ronayne and Irish TimesLiterary Correspondent Eileen Battersby dispensed with a shortlist to announce Lahiri the outright winner for her collection, Unaccustomed Earth.
Director of the award, Patrick Cotter of the Munster Literature Centre, said that, with a unanimous winner decided at an earlier stage, it would have been a "sham" to compose a shortlist.
"Not only were the jury unanimous in their choice of Lahiri's Unaccustomed Earthas the winner, they were unanimous in their belief that so outstanding was Lahiri's achievement in this book that no other title was a serious contender," he said.
Lahiri read from her book yesterday and participated in a public interview at Millennium Hall.
She was born in England in 1967 to Bengali parents. Her family moved to the US when she was three.
The award, organised by the Munster Literature Centre, goes to the author of the book judged to be the best collection of stories published in English in the past year.