Irish newcomer Patrick O'Keeffe won the Story Prize on Wednesday for short stories - which carries the largest cash prize of any annual US fiction award - for his book "The Hill Road."
The Irish-born O'Keeffe won the $20,000 first prize and an engraved silver bowl for his collection of four novellas set in a fictional Irish dairy-farming village and published by Penguin's Viking imprint.
"I didn't think this would happen," O'Keeffe, 42, said, visibly shocked on accepting the award at The New School in Manhattan. "Thanks a lot."
O'Keeffe was born on a rural Irish dairy farm. He said in an interview after the ceremony he first came to the United States in 1986 as an illegal immigrant without a college education, working in bars, waiting tables and working on construction sites.
In 1989, he returned to the United States after winning a green card in a lottery, passed his high school equivalency exam and enrolled in university in 1990 to study English, finally graduating at the age of 32.
He then earned a graduate fine arts degree in writing from the University of Michigan, where he is now a lecturer.
"This is always what I wanted to do. I had nothing to lose," he said of his desire to be an author, which began with his first efforts at writing in his late 20s.
"I did not expect my name to come up tonight, I feel really honoured," he said.
O'Keeffe's publisher has compared him to Irish-born short-story writer and novelist William Trevor, but The Baltimore Sun in a review went further by likening the newcomer to Irish literary titan James Joyce.
"If he is following in the footsteps of any of his countrymen, it's not the genteel craftsman Trevor, but someone far grander - James Joyce, whose longest and greatest story 'The Dead,' seems to be the model for O'Keeffe's hauntingly beautiful tale 'The Postman's Cottage,' the jewel of this outstanding collection," the Sun wrote.
Asked about the comparison with Joyce, he said, "It's just too much."
The other two finalists were literary heavyweight Jim Harrison for "The Summer He Didn't Die," published by Atlantic Monthly Press, and Maureen F. McHugh, whose "Mothers & Other Monsters" was published by Small Beer Press.
Harrison, best known for writing the collection of novellas "Legends of the Fall," which was made into a hit Hollywood film, and McHugh, the author of four novels including "China Mountain Zhang," were each awarded $5,000.
The Story Prize was established to honour short fiction and the first prize was won in 2005 by Haitian-American writer Edwidge Danticat for "The Dew Breaker."