James Lasdun has won the first National Short Story competition with An Anxious Man, it was announced last night, beating short-story veterans William Trevor and Rose Tremain, bestselling author Michel Faber and Delhi-based Rana Dasgupta to the £15,000 prize.
Lasdun, who is British but now lives in the US, is the author of two collections of short stories and three books of poetry - one of which, Landscape with Chainsaw, was shortlisted for the 2001 Forward prize. He is also a novelist and screenwriter and one of his short stories, The Siege, was adapted by Bernardo Bertolucci into the film Besieged.
The winning entry centres on a man struggling with financial worries while on a family holiday in Cape Cod. According to the chair of judges, the broadcaster and writer Francine Stock, "The selection process for the inaugural National Short Story prize was an intriguing, complicated and agonising business. By its nature, such a prize allows one to read and re-read the stories and to experience the many levels on which they affect you, testing the artistry, the craft and the resonance of each short story.
"What we kept coming back to however was the visceral resonance of the winning story. We chose the story that lingered most but both the winner and the runner up extended the possibilities of what you can do with the short story," she explained.
Lasdun's triumph was arguably unexpected. The frontrunner was William Trevor, the Irish-born master of the art form who has remained committed to the short story in tandem with his success as a novelist (his 2002 work, The Story of Lucy Gault was shortlisted for the Booker and Whitbread).
Michel Faber was judged the runner-up for his story The Safehouse and won £3,000. Although Faber is the author of a couple of short story collections, he is probably better known as a novelist, particularly following his 2002 epic panorama of Victorian England, The Crimson Petal and the White, in which he tells the story of Sugar, a 19-year-old prostitute.
The National Short Story contest, which offers the world's richest purse for the form and is aimed at reviving interest in the genre, was labelled "unashamedly elitist" after it called for submissions from published writers rather than seeking out new talent. Nonetheless, it drew over 1,400 entries, a much larger number than the organisers had expected.
Francine Stock was joined in her deliberations by the author William Boyd, the deputy editor of Prospect magazine, Alex Linklater, the Radio 4 producer Di Speirs and the writer Lavinia Greenlaw.
The prize is funded by Nesta (the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) and supported by BBC Radio 4 and Prospect magazine. The winning story will be published in the June issue of Prospect.
James Lasdun will also be reading a short story on a Guardian Unlimited Books podcast in July.
